The King Must Die (The Isabella Books)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  I nodded. “Don’t go. Let Mortimer and me go in your stead. If Lancaster brings his army, then Mortimer will be the one to meet him in battle, not you. He will be defeated, without risk to your life, and peace shall at last return to England.”

  “But I want to be the one who—”

  “Which is precisely what he wants. He made it well known that his mission was to take you captive—the true purpose of which was to use you against us. Do not so much as stumble within his grasp.” To mark the gravity of my advice, I knelt at his feet and took his hands in mine—hands that had once barely been big enough to clutch a spoon, now big and strong enough to take off a man’s arm with one swipe of his blade. I rested my head against his knuckles, my cheek soft against his calloused fingers so that he could feel the tear trickling from the corner of my eye. My voice was wispy, unveiling the fear in my heart when I had wanted to speak only wisdom. “Yes, you could ... you could go and fight him, with or without Mortimer at your side. But if you are taken, you will be made to do and say things against your will, all at Lancaster’s whim. I beg of you—go not to Salisbury. Go to Marlborough. Be with Philippa. How long has it been since you shared her bed? She worries for you. She needs you near. Let those loyal to you carry out your commands and uphold your authority until Lancaster meets his senses. Then ... then deal with him as you will—with ruthless vengeance or with gentle mercy, as suits your end.”

  “Mother, Mother ... I would just as soon have his head for his treason, yet you propose that I consider mercy? Why?”

  “Because those who rule by terror and practice not mercy walk a fraying rope that ultimately will give under their weight. It is to forswear the teachings of Our Lord. Forgiveness is not a weakness. It is to be God-like.” Perhaps it had been my recent time with Orleton that had inspired me so, but the old ways of vengeance had not proven useful. Something had to change. Lancaster would not be the one to realize that.

  I raised my face and saw in my son’s furled brow and twisting scowl a mess of confusion: the affront that had wrecked his pride, the instinctive hunger for revenge, the yearning to do what was right and best, and also the hesitation that hinted at his youthful, faltering sense of confidence. He had taken the crown partly because he believed he could rule more wisely than his father before him, but now he doubted whether that was so. I trailed a finger over the cold metal plate still covering his forearm. “What better an ally than one who owes you his station, his privileges, or his life even?”

  When I said those things to my son, I was not speaking solely of Lancaster, but of Mortimer, as well.

  Young Edward lowered his head, his eyes transfixed on my hand. “It would please me greatly to inflict harm upon those who have threatened or endangered me, yes. Greatly. But, I understand what you have said. I do, Mother. Perhaps I haven’t been generous enough to those who have already helped me. Perhaps I should make it more worthwhile to those who follow my will.”

  He forced his spine hard against the back of the chair to straighten himself. His gaze turned directly on Mortimer. He smiled at him—a strained, weary smile.

  “I am tired, so bloody, unbelievably tired,” he mumbled. Edward forced himself to his feet and staggered forward several steps before pausing to look over his shoulder. “Morning, Sir Roger. We will talk more then.”

  Mortimer nodded his agreement.

  Then Montagu, who had appeared from seemingly nowhere, lurched forward to slip himself beneath the king’s arm for support. Together, they shuffled across the great hall toward a servant, waiting to lead the king to a comfortable chamber that had been hastily prepared for him.

  Bishop Orleton soon excused himself for the night. Mortimer escorted me to my chamber, where he, of course, loitered long into the night.

  But we did not lie together as lovers. Instead, like conspirators invested in our own preservation, we mulled every possibility, for there were untold outcomes to consider—some foolishly optimistic, others bleak and terrifying.

  “Isabella, I am curious.” Mortimer sank to his haunches beside where I sat on my stool next to the fading warmth of a brazier. “I know you well enough to recognize when there is more swirling around in your head than what you give up in words. Tell me—when you go before Parliament, you mean to gain something more, don’t you?”

  I slid my hands down my lap and fanned my fingers over my knees. “It is time, Roger, that you were raised up.”

  He flicked at an ash flake that had drifted to the floor. “How so?”

  “To be an earl.”

  “Ah, I think not. Indeed, I would balk at the offer. Too many noses would be bent if I reached to take it.” He laughed lightly, and then gave it ample thought. “Earl of what?”

  “Whatever you choose. But something worthy.”

  “Earl of Ireland, maybe? Or is that too much? Too boastful? Too much like being a king ... Although, I’ve always fancied the place, heathens aside.” He took the short knife from the belt at his hip and poked between the iron slits of the brazier at the lump of peat.

  I humored him. “Grandiose—and too far from me.”

  “The Welsh Marches?”

  “Hmmm, fitting.” I tugged loose the pins holding back my hair, setting them in a tidy pile beside my stool. Then I separated the strands of my hair and wound it in a twisting rope of gold to loop over my shoulder. “There was a time when you did not shy from power, when you stood in the fore and seized it confidently. Why do you now hide from claiming it, even though you wield it with such skill?”

  “I’m older ... and wiser, I hope. Less arrogant than I was in my youth.” He pulled the knife from the brazier and raised a brow at me. “Besides, before, I had not been declared a traitor ... and I had not yet bedded the queen. Envy is an unforgiving demon, my love, that will tear you limb from limb.”

  A morbid chill gripped me. I drew my hands inside my draping sleeves to warm myself, but it did little good.

  What some perceived as our chokehold on power—our interest in guiding a young, impressionable and inexperienced king, no more—was a threat to them. One in particular: Lancaster. If we faltered and fell, he would leap upon us. And when he was done there would be nothing left of us but the lurid tales of the devious queen and her avaricious lover who scraped the kingdom’s coffers bare and then begged for more.

  ***

  Mortimer, Orleton and I went to Salisbury, where all the prelates and barons had gathered—all but Henry of Lancaster and those known to support him of late.

  The townsfolk jeered when Mortimer rode into the town with an armed force. For some time now he had kept his personal Welsh guards close at hand daylong, when such assemblages of arms had been forbidden to others; but it was the king who allowed him that protection because of Lancaster’s threats.

  In Parliament, Mortimer juggled the dangerous accusations launched at him deftly—like a hare evading a pack of lagging hounds in a long, futile chase—particularly in regards to insinuations that he and I had forcibly overridden the rest of the king’s advisory council. Mortimer argued, with overwhelming evidence, that Lancaster had absented himself from those council meetings and therefore voluntarily relinquished his influence. Gradually, Mortimer was able to turn the blame back onto Lancaster and away from himself.

  The murder of Edward of Caernarvon was never mentioned, for no proof had been brought forth and no one else there would risk joining Lancaster in his blundering endeavor. Day by day, my tensions eased, not so much because my fears did not come to pass, but because Mortimer carried himself with such tremendous dignity and courage that my apprehensions were replaced by admiration for the most scrutinized man in the kingdom—a man whom I loved beyond possibility, however privately.

  As it became clear that Lancaster had retreated elsewhere for the time being, Young Edward left his beloved Philippa long enough to come to Parliament and bestow three earldoms: one upon his beloved younger brother John, who became the Earl of Cornwall; one upon his good friend James Butler, no
w Earl of Ormond; and lastly ... upon Sir Roger Mortimer, who became the first ever Earl of March.

  Nothing could have provoked Lancaster more severely.

  What we had tried so hard to avert was now inevitable. Peace, sometimes, was not to be had without there first being a fight to reveal the weaker opponent. So it must be.

  17

  Isabella:

  Marlborough — November, 1328

  With Lancaster now firmly entrenched at Winchester, Mortimer and I left Salisbury to join Edward, who had returned to Marlborough to be with Philippa. We took the more circuitous road to the northwest, to swing further away from Winchester, should Lancaster bolt from there. Then, we would lodge overnight at my castle in Devizes before heading eastward to Marlborough.

  Meanwhile, a warning was sent to Lancaster that he would be charged with treason if he did not stand down.

  The single high tower of Devizes peeked above the barely leafed trees lining the road. Leaden clouds slogged above a dying landscape. The fields had already been scythed and the grain gathered and stored to be milled, leaving dun-colored bristles over a nut-brown earth.

  “I don’t want to see my son go to war, Roger,” I said.

  “Nor do I.” Mortimer kneaded at his neck with one hand, his reins held slack in the other. “I’ll lead the army in the king’s name—and he can stay safe from harm. He’ll live to rule another fifty years and have ten sons who will fight for him.”

  “He is too young, Roger. Too young to fight.” I took a hard jounce in my saddle as my horse leapt a muddy rut dissecting the road.

  “And I ... am too old.” Mortimer gave me a sideways look, questioning what I had not said.

  “I don’t want you to fight Lancaster, either.”

  We rode silently for a long time beneath darkening skies. The chill breeze that had greeted us that morning was giving over to brutally frigid gusts, as the clouds drove down hard from the north.

  Behind us trailed a formidable retinue of men-at-arms, the ranks of which would swell considerably when we joined with the king’s contingent. I had never wanted to believe it would come to this, but there had been a time when I thought no further than ridding the kingdom, and myself, of Hugh Despenser. Now, I could not help but look years ahead at the consequences of every single decision I might make.

  “The news from London is encouraging,” I said, grasping at hope.

  “But from elsewhere?” Mortimer countered, returning me to bitter reality. “Edmund of Kent, I tell you, may be an even greater problem to us than Lancaster.”

  “How so?”

  “Lancaster is Lancaster,” Mortimer remarked plainly. “But Kent ... sometimes he is the doting uncle, sometimes the disgruntled brother of the former king, still clinging to a grudge.”

  “But a grudge toward Despenser, was it not?”

  “Despenser then. Us now. He was snubbed before and assumes the same of us. No matter that he is not worthy of responsibility.”

  “Your grandson—what did they name him?” Mortimer’s first grandchild had just been born to his eldest son Edmund and his wife Elizabeth. Mortimer had shared very little about the news. I had expected a small burst of jubilation from him at the tiding, but instead he had been dour about it.

  “Roger,” he said with a scoff.

  “A good name. You should feel honored.”

  “Honored?” A glint of pain flashed behind his eyes. “Edmund named the babe after his brother, not me. I am neither vain nor delusional enough to think he would honor me thus. He gave the child the name ‘Roger’ to gain my attention, if anything. Edmund is my oldest, more intelligent than his siblings, but a laggard and too docile for his own best interests. Not that he expects things to be given to him. He simply does not care. He learned how to use a sword out of duty.” He scowled. “But that is ever a father’s disappointment—that the firstborn is not always the most promising—and a harsh reality of fatherhood, I suppose. I shall hope for more from my grandson, should I live long enough to see him grown.”

  Fists clenched, he fell silent for awhile. Finally, he rolled his head back, his eyes fixed on the sky above him, and muttered, “Forgive my rambling.”

  “You speak honestly,” I told him.

  “And you? You are pleased with your children?”

  “Yes, I am, but ... oh, I do not know how to put this—” It was indeed a complicated matter. Young Edward was like my brother Charles in many ways, only Charles never showed flashes of anger or moodiness like my son did. I only prayed he would not become as cold and ruthless as his Plantagenet grandfather, Longshanks. If he could not comprehend the power of forgiveness, England’s future would be a horribly bloody one. Robert the Bruce had understood it and because of that he had been able to unite warring chieftains against a common enemy, England, to rise above the dust and blood triumphant at Bannockburn. “Edward—he both pleases and frightens me.”

  “Frightens? How?”

  Far to the northwest, a high, flat-topped hill broke above the gently rolling horizon. It was called Silbury Hill—named after the king, Sil, who was interred somewhere far inside its depths of chalky earth many hundreds of years ago. Such places recalled the ancient peoples of Britain, before the Romans came. They had left their marks in many places: the cairns erected from boulders so enormous that only a giant could have moved them; the bulging mounds of earth like Silbury where the bones of many corpses lay; the mystical stone circle capturing the light of the rising and setting sun on the Salisbury Plain; the great white horse of chalk on the hillside not far to the north of here, who some said was cut there to honor the horse-goddess of the ancients—but those people had followed the old ways and did not know of Our Savior Jesus Christ. They had been pagans, ignorant, and Bishop Orleton once told me they had perished because of their refusal to accept the Christian ways. More likely, however, was that they had what others coveted—land—and they had been annihilated under the pretenses of a false religion. Their crude weapons had been ineffectual against the mighty fist of Rome.

  “Isabella?” Mortimer sought to regain my attention. “About Edward ... you were saying?”

  “That he can sense things. Things that are not said. And ... he is guarded, as if he does not always trust those around him. I am not always sure of his true thoughts.”

  But then, I believe that of you, too, my love.

  Mortimer shrugged. “He is merely cautious. A wise thing to be, sometimes, especially for a king. You, my dear queen, tend to believe precisely what people tell you. You trust too easily.”

  And you, my gentle Mortimer, believe me to be the naïve one? Our love, sadly, is built on lies. For as much as I love you, depend on you and have achieved with you, I shall forever question the meaning and motive behind your words.

  Yet even as we are ... I would not give you up. Not for anything.

  I felt the touch of ice on my wrist between my sleeve and the fur cuff of my glove. A snowflake had alighted there, sparkling white in the fractured, gray light of a fading November day.

  I looked at Mortimer until he met my gaze. “If I am easily gulled,” I said, “it is only because I believe there is some good in everyone. You call it a weakness. I say it is a gift.”

  “I say I do not like the way you look at me when you say that.” He winked in jest. Then he spurred his horse into a canter and rode on ahead, toward the gatehouse of Devizes as it came into view.

  ***

  Our stay at Devizes was hurried. I could count on the fingers of my two hands the total number of times I had stayed there since first coming to England. When Hugh Despenser had been on the rise, I had given up both Devizes and Marlborough to him, falsely believing that such a gesture would engender his appreciation and loyalty. But I had been utterly foolish then. I was no more. I would give up nothing, unless willingly.

  Eastward we tramped, over roads clogged with mud from melted snow, to arrive at Marlborough late the next afternoon. Philippa’s influence there was immediately appar
ent as we walked through the great hall with its sturdy furniture from the Lowlands, each piece functional enough to serve for years to come, yet splendidly crafted to please the eye. On the walls hung the brightly dyed Flemish tapestries, all with a story to tell.

  We found Edward and Philippa in a topmost tower room. In the room’s center was a large round table surrounded by a dozen chairs and one particularly high-backed one. There sat Edward, elbows on the table, buried behind a wall of books with Philippa at his right side. She reached out and turned a page for him.

  “Ah, come, look.” Edward curled his fingers at us.

  Mortimer stooped to avoid banging his forehead on the low lintel. The ceiling was barely tall enough for a grown man to stand. Every wall was stacked with burgeoning shelves of books. The room smelled of musty parchment, burnt wicks and beeswax. I turned in a circle, trying to estimate the number of books there. Indeed, I had not seen such an extensive collection anywhere, not even in a monastery, nor had I even known of this one.

  Edward blinked several times as Mortimer shut the door behind us. “Bishop Orleton is not with you?”

  “He has returned to Hereford temporarily,” I said. “But if you wish him to—”

  “No mind. Come, come look at this.” He stooped over the pages, squinting as he studied them with boyish fascination. “Philippa heard there were monks in Ireland skilled in illumination and had several of them brought over to work at the scriptorium at Canterbury. She commissioned this. Have you ever seen such detail?”

  “A book of prayers,” Philippa announced with a cherubic smile.

  I moved around the table to stand behind Edward. The work was indeed beautiful, but decidedly pagan in its embellishments, adorned with the scrolling curves similar to the jewelry worn by the warring Scots and skulking Welsh hill people. Knotted designs bordered every page, the beginning letters of each prayer were painted in bright colors and traced in gold, and everywhere were mythical creatures, some with curled and reaching claws, some fanged, others winged, embracing, hiding behind or leaping from the text, each incredible in their grotesqueness.