“Enter,” I bade, returning to the window to gaze out over the mistiness. A merchant’s boat laden with faggots of iron slogged downriver, its broad belly sinking low in the silver water.
Sir William Montagu stood in the doorway, brushing snow from his shoulders. “I was told you wished to see me, my lord.”
I couldn’t recall how young I was when I first met Will, but he had accompanied me to France when I was sent there to pay homage to King Charles. Every king needed a good man like Will: spy, protector, companion, and mentor. I could keep the kingdom easily secure until my death with half a dozen like him and never want for merriment all the while.
Struck with a thought, I sat down on the narrow stone windowsill. Its sharp edge dug into my thigh. I scratched at my chin, feeling the stiff bristles of new growth beneath my fingernails.
“Are you up for a journey, Will?”
His lips spread into a devilish grin. “Always.”
“Good. Tomorrow we ride for Castle Rising.”
“So soon after your return from the continent, my lord?”
My journey to the continent had a great deal to do with why I needed to see my mother now. What I found there had indeed changed everything between us. It had even changed me. “I have matters to settle. Long overdue ones.”
Oh, I knew more of my mother’s secrets than she would have ever suspected. Servants can be bribed for paltry sums, traitors spied upon, and maidens will spill their secrets between the sheets to flattering lovers with barely more effort than what it takes to pry their silky legs apart.
And yet, even just a year ago, I could not have imagined how so much of what I thought I knew ... was wrong.
What is done cannot be undone. How I wish that it could.
28
Edward:
Castle Rising — 1339
The clouds above the fens were piled high and dark, driven by a howling wind that lashed at the last ripples of winter snow and lifted them to collect in scattered drifts around the spikes of yellowed marsh grass. Far behind us were the stark spires of Ely Cathedral, thrusting above the drab flatness on a sole hill of chalk like a cairn of heaven. To our left, the Great Ouse curled sluggishly toward the Wash, stinking of mud and saltwater from the last tide, although now the river huddled low between its silty banks. Then, we veered away from the Ouse and the roads leading to Lynn, to follow a more lightly traveled road to the northeast.
The cold bit at my wrist where my sleeve had fallen back. I stretched my arm and tucked my sleeve beneath the flare of my fur-lined gloves. “Even the seagulls have the sense to stay out of the wind today,” I said to Will.
“The seagulls are not idiots—unlike us.” He drew his lips tight across his teeth to keep the wind from stealing his breath. “Should I have come? I haven’t seen her since ...”
He left the reflection unfinished. We had never spoken of that night at Nottingham. While I had lurked in the shadows of the corridor, it was Will who had plunged his sword into the chest of Arnaud de Mone, my mother’s faithful squire, and Will who had ordered Mortimer dragged from her.
“I need you for the company,” I told him. In actuality, I needed him to make sure I saw this task through. Had my brother John not died two years ago at Perth, I might have confided in him and brought him with me to Castle Rising today. Once, when we were but boys, he had sworn to fight the Scots alongside me. He had done so, and bravely, but sadly it had not been enough. “Don’t worry overmuch about my mother, Will. I’ll speak to her alone first. Then I’ll ask her to come with me to see her newest grandson.”
Montagu narrowed his eyes. “And you think she’ll come around that easily, Ned? She’s a stubborn woman, as I recall.”
I could not tell if it was merely the wind stinging at his eyes that made him squint or if he severely doubted the chances of my success.
“Time for an end to this.” I could spend the rest of my days heaping guilt upon her, or she upon me, but for what—something which I had only thought had happened? Or for things that ought to have been said long ago that were not? It was like a dog chasing its tail. Where was the end to it?
For hours we had ridden at a steady trot, but the closer we came to our destination, the faster I pressed my mount. We rode down and then up over the short, steep incline of one of the manmade swales that helped to drain the rich fields of the fens. Rounding a small stand of woods, we saw Castle Rising, gray and bleak beneath a lowering sky. I snapped my reins, eager to reach it, and Montagu pricked his horse’s flanks with his spurs, enticing me to a race.
He bent low behind his horse’s neck to cut the wind. Montagu was the finest horseman I knew. He could soothe the untamable beast and in a day guide its movements with only the pressure of his knees and a lean. This time, however, he was at a disadvantage. His mount, an old favorite of his, was favoring a leg and mine, lithe and barely broken, had devilishly reckless speed.
He kicked again and closed in on me. “Tell me—what was so bloody urgent, though? What must you say to her?”
I smiled at him, the frigid air blasting between my teeth and turning my lungs into a lump of ice. Tucking my chin to my chest, I clamped my knees tighter, drew my sword from its scabbard and whacked my horse’s rump with the flat of the blade twice. He stretched out his neck and flew into the wind, his mane lashing at my eyes. Trustingly, I closed my eyes as he leapt another swale. When I looked again, we were almost there and Montagu was falling behind, cursing at his lagging beast as it loped along.
I reached the castle entrance first and yanked my reins hard to the left. My horse spun madly around, clouds of steam billowing from its nostrils.
“You think that I tell you everything?” I shouted so Montagu could hear, his horse now trotting with a distinct limp. “There are some things I keep to myself—what I say to my wife in bed to seduce her into conceiving one more child, for one ... what words pass between my mother and I, another. So ask no more, Will. I’ll take this to my grave.” I slammed my sword into its scabbard for emphasis.
The portcullis went up and the gates parted. Montagu drew up, panting as hard as his pitiful horse, and quick behind him the guards followed, ushering me to my decided fate.
***
My mother gasped and covered her mouth. Her hand shook so terribly that she had to turn away to hide it. Frantically, she began to scurry about, putting away objects that had been carelessly strewn about her private chambers: an open book, an old letter, an assortment of jewels arrayed upon her small dressing table as if she were considering which to wear for the day, but had not expended the effort to make a final choice. Her hair was neatly plaited and pinned tightly back, but she wore no veil or adornments in it. Her gown was a plain, dark blue of coarse wool with an overtunic of gray—practical for guarding against the winter chill, but far from making a statement about her long, royal lineage.
“You did not write to say you were coming,” she uttered, finally composed enough to face me.
“Cologne is just as dull and cold in the winter as England. Besides, Philippa wanted to come home, to be back with the other children. I have a new son. I trust you received the message?”
She barely nodded. I could tell she wanted to know more about the child—was he hale and healthy, did he have my eyes or his mother’s?—but she still looked so stricken with dread that she could not even muster a simple, cordial question.
I undid the clasp on my cloak and flung the heavy garment over the back of a chair. The clasp, a pair of twining, golden snakes with jewels clenched in their fangs, had been sent as a gift from my sister Joanna, Queen of Scotland.
Dragging the chair closer to the hearth, I bade my mother to sit, while I settled down on a wobbly stool. “Enough of letters, though. Sometimes ... sometimes it is hard to tell what the words actually mean, especially when there is no voice, no expression behind them.”
Still she had not sat down beside me. Her legs quivered. Her fingers worried at the single gold band on a finger of her left
hand, twisting it and tugging it until it looked as though she might yank her finger off. She gazed into the struggling fire in the hearth, as if contemplating casting herself into the flames.
“He lives,” I said.
With those two words, the color—what little there was of it—drained from her face. As her knees buckled, I sprang forward, my stool clattering to the floor. I caught her just before she collapsed in shock. She was weightless in my arms—having fretted herself to a sack of bones since I left for Cologne. The lines around her mouth, on her forehead, between her brows, beneath her eyes—they were now the deep, dark trenches of declining age. Not so long ago, they were barely the graceful etchings of distinguished maturity—neither young nor old, but something in between. I felt her forehead. It was deathly cold. Her skin was pale, like one who had hidden from the light of the sun for many years. I rubbed at her fingers until finally they closed around mine. Her eyelids fluttered. She drew a long, deep breath.
I helped her up. Once she was in the chair and steady, I brought her a cup of water to moisten her cracked lips.
“I have seen him with my own eyes,” I said. “‘William of Wales’ he calls himself. A few years ago, a papal notary named Manuel de Fieschi wrote to me and told me my father was living in Italy. I didn’t believe him at first, but when Sir John Maltravers confirmed it was not my father who was embalmed and buried at Gloucester, I thought it possible. When I went to the continent, I had this ‘William of Wales’ brought to me. By God’s eyes, it was him. He told me everything.”
She reached one shaking, feeble hand toward the fire. “What will you do?”
“Nothing,” I said.
Her eyes widened in astonishment. Water spilled over the brim of the cup and onto the floor. “But I-I-I ... I am responsible for ... I let Edmund die to protect ... to protect ...”
Mortimer. And Mortimer died to protect you.
Forlorn, she gazed into the puddle at her feet, setting the cup beside it. Was she still so heartsick that even the thought of his name made it feel to her as if his death were only yesterday?
What is done cannot be undone, I told myself. But I had come for a reason—sailed on rugged seas and traversed through dismal weather with my wife and infant son, no less: I had erred, egregiously.
“And I, Mother ...”—I reached out, took her stone cold hand in mine—“bear the guilt of the death of another innocent man. I have not heard you speak his name for eight years now: Roger Mortimer.”
I no longer hated the man. He had loved her, of that I was certain ... and she him. Perhaps for her it was as much need of him as true love. Carnal indulgences had blinded them both to virtue. Mortimer had abandoned his wife of twenty years for her. She, as well, had forsaken her husband and turned his fate over to scoundrels. My uncle Edmund, however, had threatened everything for them. And I, not knowing any better, had failed to save his life. At the time, I knew that if he was right and my father was alive and restored to the throne, I would have lost my chance to ever become King of France. And so I let him die, rather than believe him.
Whatever the cause for all this strife and woe, I had vowed to abandon judgment—to forgive them in my heart. Did I not desire the same?
Shivering, she pulled the mantle around her shoulders. “Who have you told?”
I stoked the logs, spent to lumps of glowing charcoal, and added some kindling to revive the fire. “No one, except for Philippa.”
“Not even Montagu?”
“Certainly not. Tell him and the world will know.” William Montagu had been both mentor and friend to me since my boyhood. I trusted his loyalty like no other man alive, but he liked to talk, especially after several pints of ale. “It was Philippa who convinced me to come to you. I wasn’t certain, when I first learned the truth, what to do really. Once I’ve clung to a purpose, I find it hard to let go. I’ve harbored anger like a battered shield ... being the soldier I am. If set upon, I protect myself. When I am threatened, I strike. It took a wise woman to enlighten me that my anger had earned me nothing after all these years.”
“Philippa is a good woman.”
“I know.” I stood to lean against the mantel and kicked little lumps of fallen ashes back into the hearth. “You saw that in her when we first went to Hainault.”
“The other girls—they were prettier, but she was ... different. Smarter.”
“She is, she is. And she constantly reminds me of it. I find it humbling.” I forced a smile, not so much for appreciation of Philippa, but to ease my mother’s mind before broaching my reason for coming once more. “He is in good health. At peace with God.”
“Does he know that I —”
“That you made Lord Berkeley swear to protect his life? That Mortimer knew he had been freed?”
Her chin tucked against her shoulder, she nodded.
“Yes,” I said, “he knows.”
“How?”
“Lord Berkeley told him the night he guided him to freedom.”
“But I made Berkeley swear, on his life, never to tell anyone.”
“Father had told Berkeley, more than once, that he did not want to be king ever again. Berkeley was keenly aware that if he let Father know why he was being set free, and by whom, then he would go in gratitude and live in peace, not with revenge in his soul. He was right.”
Tears filled her eyes. But tears of what?
“Father has long since ceased wanting to be a part of the world that you and I know. His birthright—the Crown of England—he reviled it. He was glad to be free of the burden. The life he lived, he said, was merely a test of his faith—a faith that often wavered. Truly, he is at peace now. I want you to be at peace, too, Mother. He forgave you long ago, and I came here to tell you that I forgive you, and Mortimer, for all that has been done or misunderstood between us.”
I knelt before her, my head bowed. “It is me who begs your forgiveness now. Should you deny me, I’ll love you no less, for I have been guilty of arrogance and presumption. Ambition blinded me. It was a trait Mortimer and I shared.”
“I loved him so much.” She said it so plaintively that it struck me hard and heavy.
I placed my head in her lap, as I had when I was a very small boy, begging for a story to stave off bedtime.
“Do not hold Roger as the villain in all this, my son. He was not. There was more good in him than you know. More than you know.”
“Then I was wrong—about both of you.”
Mother stroked my hair, winding a loose curl around one of her fingers. Her voice was husky, roughened by a sea of tears that had long since been wept dry. “I forgive you ... for everything.”
I looked up at her. It was not easy to abandon the past, to let go of an anger that was so familiar that without it, I felt as if I were bereft of both weapon and shield. But with her words, she vanquished it, for both of us. She had set us in the present, to live for today, to go forward.
“You will come to Windsor to see our newest son—Lionel?”
“I will.” She encircled me in her arms and laid her head on top of mine. Then ever so faintly, I heard the murmur of a lullaby rising from her throat.
“Lionel—he has the colic. Philippa is distraught. Like you, she refuses to abandon her children entirely to nursemaids. You must tell her what you did for my brother John. I remember you saying once that he was impossible as an infant.”
She gave a short laugh. “There was nothing I could do. It was his nature. It passed. All things do.” She hummed again and I sensed myself drifting away, weary from my journey.
“Windsor,” she said. “So much of your childhood spent there. Take me there, will you, and tell me more of the children on the way?”
“Tomorrow,” I promised.
Today I would simply be with her. Today.
What is done cannot be undone, but what will be done tomorrow ... has yet to be done at all.
Author’s Note
For centuries, Queen Isabella has been maligned in both history
and literature. One well known fictionalization of events is Christopher Marlowe’s late 16th century drama: Edward II or “The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer”; this play may have contributed to prior beliefs regarding Isabella’s involvement in the conspiracy to murder Edward II. Although I have chosen to present quotes within my story from Marlowe’s play, I have strayed far from his version of events.
Readers are advised to keep in mind that, while based on extensive research and set within the framework of actual events, this novel is a work of fiction. The dialogue and internal motivations assigned to the characters are entirely my own invention. The chroniclers of Isabella’s time, such as Jean le Bel, Geoffrey le Baker and later Jean Froissart, have provided us with many details of the era, but not all the answers. In 1878, the discovery of the letter from Manuel de Fieschi eventually caused scholars to re-examine events. Modern historical biographers (of Edward II, Isabella, Roger Mortimer and Edward III) have studied and written about the death of Edward II and also Isabella’s relationship with Roger Mortimer. For those who wish to explore the era further, many works of non-fiction may be read for various interpretations of documented facts—although even historical accounts may contain elements of bias.
Whichever theory one chooses to believe, the thing that has always spurred my imagination is pure and simple curiosity. Did Edward indeed love his ‘favorites’ in a way that he could never love his own wife? There is no dispute that he both relied on Despenser and gave him his unconditional loyalty. He had lost a close and trusted friend once before with the execution of Piers de Gaveston, so it is no wonder that in the case of Despenser he would defend him even more steadfastly.
The King Must Die (The Isabella Books) Page 31