by Hilda Lewis
But for all that her courage was high. She had proved herself to herself. No man save Mortimer had ever escaped the Tower;but then no man before had a Queen to be his saviour! It was she that had planned every step in this dangerous enterprise; she that had persuaded from their duty a prince of the church and an officer of the Tower. For all the persecution, all the humiliation she must endure, hope rose in her like a flower from the bud. Mortimer was safe and she would triumph; the mystic bond held them still.
And hope she needed. Eleanor Despenser had not sweetened with the years. Embittered by neglect, harshly used if she did not bring sufficient information she now did her once-unwilling work with zest; and when there was nothing to report, she still had a tale to carry to her master. Eleanor, once scrupulous and fine, was her husband’s victim no less than the Queen.
The Pope had refused both requests. There were no grounds for dissolving the marriage, none for unseating the bishop. For both these things the Queen thanked God on her knees; but still she prayed that her life might be less penurious, less circumscribed, less humiliating, less dangerous. For this wretchedness she must blame her husband; he was too weak of will to say No to his friends, too over-loving to see through them, too little-loving to protect his wife. When she thought of him her anger rose strong as poison. She was turned thirty; she was a woman and no nun. She was weary of loneliness and of her empty bed; weary of penury, weary of watching herself in every word and deed. Would there never be an end? She saw no hope but in a miracle.
And suddenly there was an end; the miracle had happened—such a miracle as she had not admitted to her wildest dreams. God had remembered her.
She was for France; for France with the King’s goodwill. For France, dear land of her birth; for France and her brother—little Charles with whom she had once played and now, unbelievably King of France. And best of all Théophania, dear comfortable Théophania. To Mortimer she gave no more than a passing thought. Him she did not expect to see; he had been sent with an army into Gascony. These days she could think of nothing save her journey into France—France where she need not watch every word, where she would be esteemed as a Queen and as a woman. She would tell her brother of the way she had been treated—her lands, her incomes sequestered, of the humiliations and the insults—and he would see her righted. He was King of France and her husband’s overlord in right of Gascony, Aquitaine and Ponthieu.
And that was the key to the miracle.
Edward had paid no homage for his French possessions since her father’s death; and some excuse there had been. Her eldest brother had come to the throne and then her second; they had reigned so short a time; death had excused Edward from his homage. Now there was no excuse. Her youngest brother wore the crown—and there’d been time and time enough. But, as always, Edward was unwilling so to affront his pride. Now, unless homage were paid and at once, Charles threatened to take Gascony, Aquitaine and Ponthieu back to himself. That Mortimer was already in Gascony with an armed force showed it to be no idle threat.
To Isabella it seemed as though fate forever set Mortimer against her husband. Did he know of her part in his escape? She thought not; she had ordered Alspaye and Orleton to hold their tongue—though that they would have done without her command; the affair was dangerous. Whether he knew or not mattered little—she was not likely to see him; yet she would have liked to see him—the man her own wits had saved.
She brought her thoughts back to the matter in hand.
Edward had sent an embassy to Paris, but it wasn’t having much success. Nor could it. It was trying to pacify Charles—and no promise of homage. And then from the Pope, from the Pope himself the request. Let Madam the Queen go to France; already she had proved herself a peace-maker. Let her make peace between brother and husband. She must, she supposed, thank Orleton for that! From France the unsuccessful envoys welcomed the Pope’s request and the King’s Council supported it. To her joyful surprise the Despensers made no objection—they were glad to be rid of her. They believed she would fail in her mission. She would return discredited… if she returned at all. Either way would please them.
All the time the matter was being discussed she, herself, had said no word. When, at last, the King made his will known she said, neither eyes nor mouth betraying her overwhelming joy. ‘Sir, in this, as in all things, I am the King’s obedient servant.’
Now preparations were on hand. Had there ever been difficulty about the Queen’s expenses? Now the master of her gowns was summoned together with her tailors and her silk merchants. Now she was to be dressed as befitted a Queen. Had arms and throat and head gone bare of jewels? Now there was no lack; her casket overflowed. Never let it be seen in France that she was treated unqueenly.
It was a gay company that set forth—the Despensers and their spies left behind. In Dover harbour lay the royal ship fresh-painted, fresh gilt, standards flying and her seamen all in new clothes. On the ninth of March in the year of grace thirteen hundred and twenty-five the Queen sailed.
And what was to become of that sailing no man could foresee nor the Queen herself imagine. She leaned upon the bulwarks; she saw the cliffs of Dover fall away on the skyline; she felt the sad years fall away with them. How had she so long endured her life in bitter England?
And now, quite suddenly, the death of her father and of her brothers that, in England, had seemed to touch her little, broke upon her afresh. She was filled with grief, as though going home to the new-dead. There was surprise in her grief and some pleasure. She had thought her heart withered in England.
Charles received her with joy; a pleasant young man, very handsome, the little boy still lurking on his pouting mouth. He had ridden to Calais with a great train to do her honour. Now he begged her to excuse his Queen; she was pregnant once more and the physician had ordered her into the country until the child should be born. Already she had lost two children in pregnancy and Charles was troubled about the succession. Isabella murmured her regrets and wishes for mother and child. She was not sorry Jeanne was not to be in Paris; Jeanne of Evreux was a noted beauty, Isabella preferred to shine alone.
Now from Calais through the countryside of home the procession rode where peasants flocked with blessings to greet their long lost princess; and out came the seigneurs riding to kneel in homage, to bring her with love into their castles.
Paris at last; Paris with its walls and towers and churches; with its numberless bridges crossing the river bright as a rib and; the smell of the Seine, the almost forgotten stench, came up to her sweet as roses.
In the great hall of St. Pol she sat to receive homage and greetings. She looked—gold head to foot and hung with jewels—like an image; no Christian image Madam de St. Pierre thought, but like some heathen idol. Gracious and smiling she received them all—relatives and old friends; the unsuccessful envoys, and Englishmen exiled or discontented. Madam de St. Pierre, unable to take her eyes from this beloved child, saw the long jewelled fingers stiffen upon the golden gown.
The lord Mortimer of Wigmore had come to kiss his Queen’s hand.
Save for the stiffening of that hand—the only sign of her whole body braced against the shock—Isabella sat motionless. The heavy gold of her gown hid the panic pulses of her heart. It was as though he laid his hand upon her naked breast. She felt it leap like a wild, frightened thing beneath the hunter’s hand. And all the time she asked herself Why? Why this tumult in all her blood? But even in this moment she remembered to guard her eyes. She glanced at him; no more. But in that brief glance she saw how he stood out from all the rest, for all their fine clothes; stood out even above her handsome brother—this sturdy, stocky man in the leather jerkin and plain cloak. His eyes were unchanged—grey and cold and wary. He wore a little beard that, she thought, became him vastly; the reddish hair he still wore cropped showing the handsome shape of his head—the one handsome thing about him.
He dropped upon his knee; he saluted her hand no more nor less than was proper. Yet when his lips cam
e down cold and heavy upon her hand, arrows of sweet pain pierced her through and through, pierced through heart and breasts, drove into the very womb. She was faint with such desire she had never known. Beneath the ecstasy she sat rigid; ecstasy… and fear; fear of the thing that had fallen upon her. And all the time the clamour of the flesh deafened her to reason, to duty. I starve and only he can feed me. I saved him once; now let him save me. Sweet Mary let him know the passion and the bond… and did not know she blasphemed.
He lifted his head; she saw the cold eyes pricked with desire that was not love. Well, so he fed her now she would be content.
Through all the day’s high ceremonies she was obsessed by him. Lust alone moved him—she did not deceive herself; lust and lust alone. But that lust she knew well how to play upon, to sweeten with ambition; a Queen’s power to give more than love to an ambitious man. And she cared not at all about Jeanne that loved him and had borne his children—Mortimer’s wife that had been her friend. As a wolf obeying its nature thirsts for blood, so she for the body of this man.
XXVII
Mortimer had wasted no time. That first night of their meeting he had come to her bed. And it was all unexpectedly easy; Charles, in sentimental mood, had given her the apartments they had shared as children; a wing at St. Pol where an outer stairway ran direct to the ruelle of her bedchamber.
That first night, when they had made love and she lay beside him longing to be taken again, she said, seeking to rouse him once more, When you saw me first—at Westminster, what did you think of me?’
‘Nothing. You were the Queen and not in my sights.’
‘And when you saw me today?’
‘A handsome piece and a hot one; the way I like a woman.’
‘Did you not think Here’s a Queen for my bed?’ she asked piqued.
‘A Queen’s like any other woman in bed; no better than she proves herself!’
‘Do I prove myself?’
He looked at her naked and lovely and all soft with desire. ‘You do well enough!’ And he’d give no woman the advantage.
She stretched herself against him; he smelt the scent of vanilla. She was sweeter in her habits, he thought, than most!
‘You do well enough,’ he told her again; and now, desire swelling, said, ‘Or so I think. Come, let’s try again!’
She loved him because he made no flowery speeches; he was forthright, simple in his lovemaking; but more because he satisfied her yet left her desirous still.
When they lay back waiting till desire should take them again, he said, ‘You are better than all women—and not because you are a Queen. You are wild as a gypsy and fresh as a virgin!’ he slid his hand between her thighs.
A little later she asked him if he had known it was she that had saved him from the Tower.
‘I did not know. I marvelled whose wits had planned it, whose tongue persuaded others into so dangerous an enterprise. I might have guessed it was a woman—a woman in love.’
‘I was not in love—not then. I did not know you.’
No woman—and certainly no Queen—risks what you risked save for love. Certainly you were in love—and, I fancy, you knew it!’
‘It was not love. It was fear… fear for us both. I felt our luck rose and fell together. But now it is love; love for ever!’
‘For ever’s a long time,’ he said and took her again; it could not happen too often for her pleasure.
She lifted herself upon an elbow and looked down with doting love upon the closed eyes that, in the act of love, stared amused into her own. She doted upon every wrinkle in the strong, brutal face, every thread in the greying hair. The Tower had taken toll of his youth, but of his manhood, nothing. She doted upon the strong body, upon the arms and legs that, like steel, clipped her close. She delighted in his maleness; the smell of his sweat and of his love-making intoxicated her. After they had made love it was her habit to lie watching him willing him to take her again. Nor did repetition lessen pleasure; rather it deepened delight. Now, in pretended sleep, he knew how her eyes devoured his nakedness. He opened an amused eye, grinned and stretched out a hand.
She lay beneath him delighting in the vicious thrusting of his body. She thought of her husband’s indolent, insolent performance—love-making she could not call it—with anger, with disgust. She was thirty-one, she had been married full seventeen years; and only now had she been satisfied. She had come at last into her woman’s inheritance. For this she gave him not passion alone but an almost servile gratitude.
What must become of this she could not think. That she could part from him so lately, so wonderfully found, she could not accept. He was here now, within her, part of her own body. That he should come to England could not be; his life was forfeit. She must not think of the future; still less of the past when she had lain shamed by her husband’s indolence. She must think of the present, only—that she lay with her lover in her own land of France. She must live in the present; she must make the present stretch as far as possible.
Charles spared no honour, no pleasure, for his sister. There were hunting-parties and tournaments, there were feasts and games, there was music and dancing. When Mortimer saluted her Queen of Love and Beauty she was happier than when they had crowned her Queen of England, happier, even, than when she had borne the heir to the crown; that last had brought her added consequence, yet like all her child-bearing had been a duty still. Now she understood a woman’s need to bear a child to the man she loves. She wished with all her passionate blood that she might bear Mortimer a child; for this she would welcome the discomforts of pregnancy, the dangers of labour. But—she reckoned the time since the King had come to her bed—she dared not.
These days she was beautiful enough to make a man catch his breath. She was all a flame; she that had been quiet and pale—an unlit lamp—was now lit with the joy that burned within her. The amber-green eyes glowed like a cat’s in the dark, her mouth showed ardent, red and full. Madam de St. Pierre watched, troubled. How to keep back the gossip whispered upon all tongues? And when would that whisper become a shout to be heard across the sea, to give the Despensers the longed-for grounds to set the Queen aside?
But she, once so subtle, had lost herself in love. It was as though she believed that in the sea that flowed between England and France all scandal must be drowned. Théophania tried to make clear to the Queen the danger she courted.
‘Madam, you are a Queen and an honoured guest; and here, in Paris, we take kindness between… friends, lightly. But in England it is another matter. Who would make light of kindness between the King’s wife and the King’s enemy? Certainly not the Despensers. They would—and could—make it matter enough to dissolve your marriage. Then—forgive me, Madam, if I put it plain, I speak with the tongue of love—you would no longer be welcome here in France. We French are a shrewd people; we know how to jump with the times.’
The Queen said nothing. Only her eyes narrowed; there was about her an almost greedy look.
Théophania watched deeply troubled. It was hard to blame the Queen; her life had been loveless and harsh, her young womanhood run to waste. Yet there would be plenty to blame her—and not only her enemies. Censure would spread throughout Christendom. Then, however unwilling, the Pope must speak. Let her look to her marriage and her crown!
Théophania’s words had served as a warning of another kind—the shortness of time; the need to waste no moment. Now the hours of night were not enough; now Isabella must make her chances, stealing away from feast or hunt, drawing Mortimer with her to take their pleasure when and where they would. She was growing thin, her beauty fine drawn; she was burning herself up with passion. That Mortimer’s passion was neither deep nor true, nor yet lasting, she knew well; she had caught him by his lust and his ambition. This was her first experience of love; it was by no means his. He had taken women wherever he found them; not only in his own marches but all the way from Paris to Gascony and back again. He had told her so, not boasting but mentioning it lig
htly—his male right. She would tell herself she did not care—other women were so much cattle; never before had he won a Queen to his bed. Beside herself all women must pale. But for all that she was, at times, eaten with jealousy of those unknown women. But it was nothing like the jealousy that tormented her on account of the woman she did know. Now she remembered Jeanne was his wife, the mother of his children; to whom he owed an affection, a loyalty that must hold him for life. All other women, the Queen included—were but women; his wife was his wife. When Isabella thought of Jeanne she was eaten as by a canker.
At times jealousy drove her to excite him with lewd words, to touch him with erotic fingers; and then, though she herself fainted with longing, to hold him off. It was always she that surrendered first, yet not until she had roused him to brutality, a brutality she savoured with delight, crying out with joy in the pain.
Brutal she could make him but never tender, never loving; always he was cold, half-amused. Sometimes in the crisis of their love-making he would abruptly stop—it was a game two could play—telling her that she burned herself out with passion; that within a few years there’d be nothing worth any man’s taking. They knew, both of them, that he played upon her secret fear; it made her love him ever more slavishly. She was sick with dread of losing him. He gave her no cause for jealousy. He was not yet tired of her; she was beautiful, she was passionate, and in spite of all disclaimer, there was pride in having for his mistress a Queen.