Mathilde 01 - The Cup of Ghosts

by Paul Doherty

  We continued on under St Edmunds Tower, through another gateway and into an enclosed courtyard cordoned off by the great four-squared keep as well as the Wakefield and Lanternhorn towers. Royal mansions had been built to connect these towers, magnificent houses of white and pink plaster and jet-black beams on stone foundations with red-tiled roofs. Large glass-filled windows provided both light and air whilst the inside floors were of polished wood. The walls of all the chambers were painted with ashlar, imitation stone, and decorated with eye-catching friezes of animals, plants, flowers, angels, griffins and a whole range of heraldic devices. One of these mansions, which Sandewic called his Castle on the Hoop, was given over to Isabella. An elegant residence, the castle boasted private bedchambers with hangings, chests and counters. On the ground floor was a small hall, exquisitely decorated and hung with vivid tapestries, a polished oaken table ranged along the dais, with trestle boards below for the servants. All the rooms were warmed with braziers whilst fires roared in the ornamental mantled hearths. Each was well furnished with a lavarium, consisting of wash bowls, jugs and pegs for napkins, silver candelabra as well as candle-wheels which could be lowered by pulleys to provide more light. Off the hall were parlours, butteries and kitchens all equipped with every necessity and comfort.

  Sandewic was so proud of it all, God rest and assoil his poor soul. He wanted to make us feel safe, secure and comfortable. My heart warmed to his gentle goodness. For a brief while I cried, going off by myself to a deserted parlour because the constable’s cordial welcome evoked memories of Uncle Reginald and the warm closeness which he had wrapped around me. Isabella also welcomed the Castle, after the rigours of the royal progress. She doffed her gowns and jewellery, running around the chambers laughing and clapping her hands like the joyous young woman she should have been. It was good to be alone. The king and Gaveston lodged in the nearby Wakefield Tower whilst, God be thanked, the French had stayed at the king’s palace of Westminster. Casales and Rossaleti had been given chambers in our mansion whilst Baquelle, full of the glories the Londoners had staged, returned to the great Guildhall in Catte Street to feast and boast with his fellow aldermen.

  That February became a time of waiting as preparations were made for the coronation. Isabella had described us as two sparrows. On reflection we were more like sparrowhawks, still young and tender, whilst the Tower became our safe nesting place. Sandewic, of course, came into his own. He loved his fief, so every morning he would present himself at the Castle on the Hoop with a list of minor ailments which made me smile. I treated blisters with madonna’s lily; cat-nip or neo, soaked and roasted, for the rheums and his constant catarrh. He, in turn, was eager to show me the Tower in all its glory. We visited the barbican. Inside stood a long row of specially built cages which contained the savage beasts, gifts for the English king from foreign rulers. One, in particular, fascinated Sandewic: a huge brown bear he called Woden, a fearsome brute who’d rear up, clawing the air. The stench was intense, fetid and foul from the large vats swimming in blood containing the slabs of meat fed to the beasts. Sandewic was particularly pleased with the cages. He had personally supervised their construction so the animals could pace and move. He pointed out how Woden, like himself, suffered pains in the joints. He certainly had a kinship for that great beast, even carrying a basket of fruit into Woden’s cage. On such occasions he’d dress in a special cloak fashioned out of boiled leather sheets sewn together; this served as protection against the half-tame bear: Woden would lumber towards him and gently pull at the constable, begging for the food Sandewic eventually placed on the ground.

  The constable’s great boast, however, was the little Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula situated in a corner of the inner bailey. It had fallen into disrepair and Sandewic had refurbished it out of his own revenues. He was very proud of what he called his petit bijou – his little jewel. Inside, the chapel was similar to those built before the Conqueror: a long, barn-like building with beams spanning the narrow nave leading down to a gleaming stone sanctuary with its elaborately carved rood screen and large table-altar standing on a dais. Above this, a spacious oriel window filled with stained glass depicting the liberation of St Peter from his prison in Jerusalem poured in light. The paving stones were smooth and evenly laid, the woodwork gleamed a warm dark brown. Charcoal braziers provided warmth, and to the left of the sanctuary the masons and carpenters had fashioned a small lady chapel with a carving of the Virgin and Child which replicated the famous image at Walsingham. Tablets of incense placed on top on the brazier provided a fragrant perfume whilst the chapel even boasted small benches and prie-dieus. The walls had been sanded, replastered, whitewashed and almost covered by vigorous, vivid paintings describing the history of the Tower.

  I remember it all so vividly: a cold morning with the river mist boiling across the Tower, shrouding walls and turrets, hanging across the ward like a curtain, deadening sound except for the harsh cawing of the ravens. The mist even seeped under the door into the nave of St Peter’s. I wondered if the wispy tendrils were the ghosts of those who wander searching for absolution. Sandewic paced up and down the sanctuary describing his work in the chapel. He paused and gestured.

  ‘This, Mathilde, is my Cup of Ghosts!’

  I asked him what he meant.

  ‘If only the king would come here!’ he continued, ignoring my question. ‘If he’d only reflect and pray.’ The constable lowered his head, looking at me from under bushy eyebrows. ‘This place holds the Cup of Ghosts, just as in Arthur’s tale the Chapel Perilous possessed the Holy Grail.’ He then swiftly passed on to other matters so I let it rest. ‘Soul does speak to soul – cor loquitur cor – heart speaks to heart.’

  Perhaps even then Sandewic was trying to warn me. A soldier of the old school, he was reluctant to say anything direct yet he tried to be honest and blunt. Once outside the chapel he grasped my hand and took me into a small buttery adjoining a kitchen, one of those outhouses which served the garrison. We sat breaking our fast before the fire. Sandewic could have spoken but servants were milling about. Eventually he grasped my wrist as if he’d had reached a decision and took me out down to the great Watergate; its portcullis was raised, pinpricks of torchlight glowed through the mist and the clatter of men unloading the barges echoed dully. Sandewic pushed me into a recess. He pulled my cloak up about me and thrust a pomander into my hand as some protection against the reeking stench from the waterways. Then he gestured at the torchlight.

  ‘What do you think is happening, Mathilde?’

  ‘They’re unloading stores.’

  ‘Weapons,’ Sandewic replied. ‘Bows, arrows, halberds and shields. I visited the Bowyer Tower yesterday. My lord Gaveston was also there supervising the work; our armouries and smithies are kept very busy.’

  ‘Mon seigneur the king is preparing for war against his earls?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sandewic agreed. ‘Mon seigneur certainly is.’ He turned. We stood as close as lovers. I could smell his ale-rich breath, those watery blue eyes bright with anger. ‘Did you notice, Mathilde, when we journeyed here from Dover, how we visited no castles but rested at monasteries and priories?’ I nodded. ‘Edward was insistent on that,’ Sandewic explained. ‘He did not wish others to see how those places were preparing for war, garrisoned with troops, full of stores and arms. And in France,’ he continued, ‘when I went riding out? King Philip was doing the same, preparing.’

  ‘War with France?’ I asked.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Sandewic replied.

  ‘Is that why the French were told to make their own way here and kept well away from the Tower?’

  We left the recess, going back to the gloomy gateway.

  ‘I’ve seen war, Mathilde, here in England,’ Sandewic declared. ‘Brother against brother, father against son. I fought for Earl Simon at Lewes and Evesham. I’ve seen the dead piled high like blood-soaked sacks, trees rich with corpses, villages burning, their wells crammed with cadavers. I’ve fought in Scotland and Wales and seen cru
elty not even the Lord Satan could imagine: men skinned alive, maimed and tortured then slung in cages over castle walls to rot to death.’ He stamped his feet on the cobbles. ‘I don’t want that to happen again. Tell that to your mistress.’

  In the days following I often thought of Sandewic’s warnings and discussed them with Isabella. She could do little, being taken up with the coronation, and visited, as she sardonically put it, almost on the hour by Sir John Baquelle. The merchant prince would sweep into her chambers with clothiers, jewellers, goldsmiths, grocers, silversmiths, all eager to offer presents and protestations of loyalty as well as to catch the princess’s eye with samples of their goods. In my arrogance I’d always considered Baquelle a pompous nonentity, but that fat, jolly merchant, Lord Pigeon as Isabella secretly dubbed him, was powerful in the city and instrumental in raising the loans for the crown King Edward desperately needed. Baquelle would often be closeted with both king and favourite, as well as with the exchequer officials in the Treasury Tower. I wondered if he too was party to the king’s warlike preparations.

  Other visitors arrived at the fortress, the great earls with their retinues seeking an audience with the king. Their demands were well known. They wanted a parliament to meet at Westminster as soon as possible to discuss ‘certain weighty matters’. Edward fobbed them off with excuses. Marigny and his two familiars, des Plaisans and Nogaret, also arrived to pay their courtesies to both the king and his new bride. Edward met them in the Wakefield Tower. They later shared wine with Isabella, who refused to allow me to attend, claiming Marigny did not wish me well. I was surprised at this, but my mistress was insistent. In the end the meeting did not last long. Isabella announced she felt unwell and returned to her own quarters, where, in the most robust of health, she stormed up and down her chamber cursing Marigny as her father’s ‘prying eyes’.

  ‘They tried to foist a physician on me!’ she exclaimed. ‘One of my father’s creatures. He became too familiar, he wanted to know . . .’ She fought for breath.

  ‘If you have lain with your husband?’

  ‘God’s teeth, Mathilde, no! If I might be pregnant with child!’ Isabella threw her head back and laughed. ‘In such a short time?’ she shouted. ‘Is he so monkish to know so little, and even if I was, even if I am, he’d be the last to know.’ Isabella flounced down on to a bench. ‘I informed him I no longer wished to converse.’ Isabella bubbled with laughter. ‘I clutched my stomach and declared I felt quite sick. I’ve never seen Marigny smile so much. He even had the impudence to insist, yet again, that I be tended by a French physician.’ Isabella blew a kiss at me. ‘I told him I was, by you.’

  ‘Was that wise, your grace?’

  ‘Was that wise, your grace?’ Isabella mimicked. ‘Marigny’s face! Oh, Mathilde, you should have seen it, so suffused with rage! He asked if you were another gift I’d given my husband.’

  The hairs on the back of my neck curled, a shiver of fear as if some dark presence had brushed me with its feathery wings.

  ‘Mathilde, what is the matter?’

  ‘Madame,’ I used the address I always did when I was blunt with her, ‘madame, please repeat what you said. Do so slowly.’

  Isabella did, then halfway through broke off.

  ‘Of course,’ she whispered, ‘how could he know?’ She rose slowly to her feet. ‘How would Marigny know that it was I who recommended Edward give my wedding presents to Gaveston? No one else was present that night. I later spoke to mon seigneur, and he swore that the great game was a matter of the utmost secrecy, so who, Mathilde? Sandewic?’ she added quickly. ‘For a while he was outside the door.’

  ‘Gaveston?’ I replied. ‘Even the king, despite his protestations?’ I thought back to that evening. No one else had been present, and ever since, Isabella had maintained the pretence, even to Casales and Rossaleti, that her wedding gifts had been seized by Edward for Gaveston. I recall the malicious glee of the favourite as he taunted de Clauvelin. Pourte’s death, Wenlok thrashing on the floor, the attacks on me. Was Gaveston’s hand, even the king’s, behind it all? I wanted to sit like a scholar, collect and sift all I knew, but I was unable to. So many matters were pressing in, I was confused. Isabella and I were still pawns in a game we could not even hope to control.

  A short while later Casales and Rossaleti joined us. The scribe brought in a sheaf of documents, wax and Isabella’s personal seal together with pen-quills and capped pots of dark blue ink. Already the number of petitions to her was growing. Licences to go abroad, pardons for crimes, remission of debts, exemptions from military service as well as pleas for legal assistance, be it against wrongful arrest or vexatious prosecution. Isabella sat at her chancery table sealing the hot wax or writing the phrase le roi le veut – the king wishes it – as Edward had conceded that his new wife could respond to petitions, whilst he would confirm whatever she granted. As she busied herself with these clerical tasks, Casales returned to teaching us both English. I had learnt a little with Uncle Reginald; Isabella had schooled herself. Casales now instructed us further at the king’s behest, teaching us poems like ‘Sumer is-i-cumen’, ‘The Ancient Rewle’ and even some of the bawdy songs so favoured by Londoners. He included the rather difficult words from a song composed, so he claimed, during the reign of the old king ‘A Song of the Times’, a bitter, stinging attack on corruption. I still remember some of the words:

  False and lither is this londe, as each day we may see.

  Therein is both hate and that ever it will be.

  A strange choice, but Casales, who composed his own poems, claimed it caught the spirit of the English tongue.

  Both our companions had certainly changed since our arrival in England. Rossaleti was quieter, lost in his own thoughts. He’d look at me, dark eyes full of sorrow, gnawing his lip like a man who wanted to speak but had decided to keep his own counsel. Casales was brusque but more forthcoming. On that particular day he pleaded with Isabella to advise her husband to be more prudent and listen to his councillors. He waited until Rossaleti left and became even more forthright.

  ‘Lord Gaveston,’ Casales walked to the door, opened it and quickly glanced into the darkened stairwell, ‘Lord Gaveston,’ he repeated, closing the door and coming back, ‘must be exiled. The French court is grumbling, the great earls have issued writs of arrays summoning out their retainers, the Scottish harass the northern marches, and you’ve heard the latest news?’

  ‘What?’ Isabella turned sharply in the chancery chair.

  ‘The coronation? Tonight the king’s council discuss the date but it will undoubtedly be the twenty-fifth of February. According to the Ordo of the Liber Regalis only a premier earl may carry the crown to the high altar, but on this occasion it will be—’

  ‘Gaveston?’ I asked.

  ‘Gaveston,’ Casales agreed. ‘Clad like a king all in purple.’

  Later that afternoon Edward and Gaveston, both dressed in loose jerkins, shirts and hose, cloaks wrapped about them against the cold, sauntered across to our mansion. They acted like boys released from the schoolroom, teasing each other over a pet monkey which had stolen one of Gaveston’s jewels then bitten one of his lap dogs. When Sandewic joined us they turned the teasing on him and Isabella, and despite the presence of our visitors Edward inveighed bitterly against the leading earls. Gaveston was a born mimic and the king bawled with laughter as his favourite imitated different noblemen, giving them all nicknames. Gaveston even went down on all fours, barking loudly, mocking Guy de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, whom he’d dubbed ‘The Black Dog of Arden’. Afterwards, as we played dice, Isabella tried to raise the question of the coronation, but Edward deftly turned this aside, drawing his dagger and accusing his favourite of using cogged dice. At dusk both men left, followed by Casales, leaving Sandewic, who sat with a thunderous expression on his face.

  ‘Tonight,’ he went towards the door, slapping his gauntlets against his hand, ‘we’ll meet, we’ll talk, but nothing will change.’ He paused, wincing at the pai
n in his thigh.

  I insisted he stay and made him confess that the pains from the rheums in his muscles were growing worse. I prescribed some mugwort for a poultice and Abbot Strabo’s cure for the pains, the flower of southernwood, quite a precious herb. I had a small portion of it, ground, boiled and strained, and gave him two phials, warning him the taste would be very bitter so he should mix it with wine, to which Sandewic replied that he liked such cures. Once I’d finished I made my own request of him, something I’d determined on during the day, to which Isabella had already agreed. I first swore Sandewic to secrecy, then asked for an escort to accompany me into the city the following day. Sandewic looked surprised but declared it would be best if the escort was one man so we could slip out of the Tower unnoticed. He offered the captain of his own archers, a Welshman I’d met in Paris, a redoubtable, tough-faced character named Owain Ap Ythel, and I accepted.