The Battle of the Queens

by Виктория Холт

  Henry looked at Hubert who replied: ‘My lord, the King has commanded the return of his sister and the Pope has threatened Hugh de Lusignan with the Interdict if she is not sent back at once. I think you may rest assured that ere long she will be your bride.’

  The King of Scotland looked faintly sceptical.

  ‘I am determined to have one of the Princesses,’ he said. ‘I do not wish for a mere child such as Isabella is, but by my faith I will take her if the other is not returned in good time. Marriage I will have – even with Isabella.’

  ‘Marriage there shall be,’ replied Hubert, ‘either with Joan or Isabella. We will sign on that, my lord.’

  ‘I have two sisters, Margaret and Isabella, and I want husbands for them,’ went on Alexander.

  Henry knew that Hubert was a little disturbed because King John had promised their father, William the Lion, that the two girls should have his sons – Henry, himself, and Richard. Henry knew though that the Barons would not consider marriage with Scotland good enough for him now that he was the King. His wife would have to bring him a little more than peace with Scotland.

  Hubert said: ‘We will find rich and powerful barons for your sisters, my lord.’

  For a moment Alexander hesitated and then, evidently so delighted was he to have a sister of the King for his own bride that he decided to settle for two noblemen for his sisters.

  So the conference ended happily and it was clear to Henry that both sides were gratified.

  Later there was feasting in the hall. Henry was seated beside the King and they talked pleasantly and in friendly manner together. He noticed that Hubert paid great attention to both the Scottish princesses and Margaret in particular.

  * * *

  It had been a long journey and a perilous one across France, and then the sea had been so rough that Joan had not much cared whether she reached the other side of the Channel or not. But at last she was home, and she kept thinking of how apprehensive she had been when she had set out with her mother and remembered the tales Isabella had told her of her childhood in Angoulême. She should have known that her mother loved Hugh; she should also have known that he would only have to take one look at her and he would be as much in love with her as he had been when they were young.

  But that was all over now. Nothing was to be gained by brooding on the past. She had a new life to face and since she had failed to become Hugh’s wife, they had another bridegroom for her.

  A resentment flickered within her. They did not consult her wishes in any of these matters affecting her future. Princesses had to realise that their lives were governed for them and that they married men not because they would make good husbands or because the princesses loved them … no, it was only because it was good for the country to make an alliance with another country. Women like her mother, though, managed to get their own way; and sometimes Joan wondered whether if her mother had really loved Hugh in the first place she would have allowed herself to have been carried off by John.

  She was not of her mother’s nature; therefore she must accept what was prepared for her.

  She arrived at Westminster Palace and was pleased to be greeted by her brother. He had grown in size and in dignity since she had last seen him. He was almost a man, being fourteen years old; and he was undoubtedly aware of being King.

  He greeted her warmly and told her how sorry he was for what she had suffered. He did not mention their mother until they were alone and then he wanted to hear how she fared.

  Joan told him that Isabella was well and happy in her marriage. Hugh de Lusignan doted on her and people said he was her slave. She did not add that she had heard the whisper that his devotion to his wife would be his undoing because he seemed to have no will but hers.

  Henry told her that he had seen Richard at his coronation, that their brother was well content with life at Corfe, and that as soon as he was of an age to leave his tutors he would bring him to court.

  ‘The trouble with us,’ said Joan, ‘is that we are all too young.’

  Henry admitted that it was a pity that they had not been born a few years earlier.

  ‘Or that our father had lived longer.’

  Henry shook his head. In his newly found wisdom he knew that if that had happened there would have been no inheritance for him.

  Joan was able to see her sisters and was amazed how they had grown. As for them, they did not know her; four years was a long time in their brief lives.

  Four years, thought Joan. When she had left she had been a child, and indeed knowing Hugh and learning to love him had given her a maturity beyond her years.

  She must grow up; she must learn to shut out the past and face the future, for she was going to be married as soon as it could be arranged and instead of living, as she had believed she would, in the warm lush south of France, she was going to the bleak north of England to marry a man she had never seen.

  Henry had said: ‘He will be better for you than Hugh de Lusignan. He is not an old man. He is twenty-two, so he will be more suitable.’

  She turned away. How could she explain to Henry that she had come to accept Hugh as the most suitable man in the world.

  * * *

  The cavalcade was on its way to York and beside the young King rode his sister. Outwardly she looked serene and she was surprised that she could appear so indifferent to her fate. Since she had lost Hugh it did not seem to matter what became of her, so perhaps that was just as well.

  Henry was pleased with her. ‘I had feared you would weep, sister,’ he said, ‘for you are young to marry. But you will be nearer home than you would have been had you married into France. We shall be able to meet now and then. I promise you shall join us when we travel in the North. It will be easy for you to come across the Border. And your husband will be pleased with you for you are very fair to look upon. I tell you this: you have a certain look of our mother and I have heard it said that there was not a woman in the Courts of France or England to compare with her.’

  ‘I have heard that said too,’ replied Joan.

  ‘And you will have the satisfaction of knowing that your marriage has brought peace to England and Scotland. There is nothing that brings peace to countries like marriage between the ruling families.’

  ‘I could believe that to be so.’

  ‘It is so, Joan; and how happy we should be that it is in our power to bring peace to so many.’

  ‘I hope you will feel contented when your time comes, brother,’ she retorted. ‘But it will be different with you. You are the King and I doubt not you will have more say in whom you marry than a mere princess does.’

  ‘I intend to,’ said Henry, smiling complacently.

  She looked at the pines on the horizon and thought of riding in the forest of Lusignan with Hugh before she had known he was in love with her mother.

  In due course they arrived in York, where people ran from their houses to get a glimpse of the bride. They thought her beautiful and called God’s blessing on her. She thanked them quietly and graciously; and she heard one old beldame murmur: ‘Poor wee child. She’s over young for marriage.’

  This time there would be no cancellation. This marriage would take place, she feared.

  She stood in the cathedral, which was said to be the most beautiful in England, only vaguely aware of the grandeur of its massive buttresses decorated with ornamental tracery, its elegant niches and clustered pillars, and beside her was the stranger – this red fox, as she had heard him called – young, eager to please her, not unkindly; her husband, and she must be glad of this marriage since because of it peace would be brought to the borderlands of England and Scotland.

  The ceremony was over. She was a queen – a Queen of Scotland. Alexander took her hand and led her from the Abbey to the castle and the bells rang out long and loud in the city of York for this was a day of rejoicing.

  They sat side by side at the banquet and he took the most choice pieces of meat and fed them to her. His hand closed over
hers and he said: ‘You must not be afraid of me, little wife.’

  She looked at him intently and tried to read in his face what manner of man he was, and because he smiled reassuringly at her, her fear passed away.

  * * *

  While the celebrations for the union between England and Scotland and the peace it would bring were in progress another marriage took place at York. Hubert de Burgh married Alexander’s sister Margaret.

  Alexander was clearly delighted for his sister to marry the most important man in England; as for Henry, he was so fond of his Justiciar whom he also regarded as his greatest friend, that he was absolutely delighted to give his consent.

  Hubert was not exactly a young man but his warm open manner had always won him adherents among young people. He was shrewd and ambitious but there was just that touch of emotionalism in his nature which brought him friendship, as it had in the case of the young Prince Arthur and now Henry.

  Alexander had further reason for satisfaction, for his younger sister Isabella would shortly marry Roger the son of Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk; and this meant that his sisters would have for their husbands two of the most influential noblemen of England. It was true that John had promised the two girls to Henry the King and his brother Richard, but marriages with them would not have been celebrated for years and delayed marriages very often meant none at all.

  So, Alexander was delighted. He had the Princess Joan for himself and his two sisters would represent his cause in England and bring up their children to have very special feelings for Scotland.

  He could now retire behind the Border and deal with the quarrelsome chieftains who were always ready to rise and plague him whenever he found himself in difficulties.

  Joan and Alexander rode north while Hubert with his bride and his King went south.

  Hubert could be forgiven for a certain complacency. There had been those who had prophesied disaster when William Marshal had died, but this had not proved to be the case. He could say that England had been governed with the utmost skill in the last two years; and as the King grew out of his childhood, providing he was ready to listen to advice, the country would grow stronger and as the country grew stronger, its Justiciar would be more and more appreciated and more powerful.

  Now riding along beside the King, his young wife on the other side of him, he could give way to a certain amount of exuberance, although he was too experienced not to know that a man in his position must be ever watchful.

  He was perhaps the richest man in the kingdom. Margaret had brought a good dowry and of course he would now have especial influence with Scotland. He remembered that once William Marshal had said that when a man was at the height of his power was the time when he must be most watchful.

  Henry was smiling happily.

  ‘I think Alexander will be good to my sister,’ he said, ‘and she to him.’

  ‘I am sure of it, my lord,’ replied Hubert. ‘He would not dare to be otherwise than good to the sister of the King of England.’

  ‘My brother is not a man to be influenced by fear,’ said Margaret gravely. ‘He will be good to his wife because it is his duty and inclination to love and cherish her.’

  ‘Well spoken, my love,’ cried Hubert. ‘Is that not so, my lord?’

  ‘It is indeed,’ replied Henry. ‘And it pleases me that we have brought harmony to the two kingdoms. It will show people how I intend to rule.’

  He is growing up indeed, thought Hubert. He takes credit for these marriages as though they were brought about by him. Well, that is the way of kings, and it will be well when he can be seen as the ruler – as long as he remembers to follow the advice of those who serve him well.

  So it was a happy party that rode into Westminster; even the wily and experienced Hubert had forgotten that success – which fate had so bountifully bestowed on him – invariably provokes the envy of the less well endowed.

  Chapter IV

  THE REBELS

  Almost immediately there was murmuring throughout the court about the Justiciar. His enemies were asking each other: Who is this man? Is he the King? He is the man who decides who shall marry whom and he makes sure that his pockets do not remain empty while he pulls the King’s leading strings. Is it not time the Justiciar was made to realise he is not quite the King of England?

  John had sown a great many seeds of discordancy when – to further his needs of the moment – he had given land and castles to foreigners in exchange for money or certain concessions, and this meant that in spite of the efforts of William Marshal and Hubert to eliminate the foreign influence, a certain element remained.

  This group was led by the Earl of Chester, that Randulph de Blundervill, who had married Constance the widow of Geoffrey (brother of King John) and therefore became stepfather to Prince Arthur who had been murdered by his uncle John. Chester had hoped at one time to put Arthur on the throne when he, Chester, would have proceeded to rule through the boy. Constance however had hated him and fled from him taking Arthur with her and, declaring that their marriage had never been consummated and therefore was no marriage at all, had taken as her husband Guy de Thouars. Constance had not lived long after that and when John had murdered Arthur that put an end to Chester’s hopes of ruling through the boy, so he had turned his attention to other ambitious schemes. Now that the power of Hubert de Burgh was ever increasing Chester was determined to bring the object of his enmity from his high place; so he gathered about him those as discontented as himself.

  Chief of these was perhaps Falkes de Breauté, a wild adventurer, a man who was capable of any violent deed to gain his ends. He was a Norman of obscure birth and illegitimate, who had come to the notice of King John, and being of a similiar nature – irreligious, unscrupulous, ready to commit any cruel deed and in fact relishing the undertaking – the King had found him amusing, a good servant, and as he enjoyed his company was ready to reward him. Thus the Norman, who was little more than a peasant, had sprung into prominence.

  When the barons had revolted against the King, Falkes had been at John’s side and as a general in the King’s army he had enjoyed some success. As a reward John promised to find a rich wife for him and had decreed that he should marry Margaret, the widow of Baldwin, Earl of Albemarle. Margaret was horrified to be given this cruel man, merely in order that her fortune might pass into his hands, but the King had said the marriage must take place and Margaret, knowing the kind of man with whom she had to deal, submitted, though with the utmost reluctance. As, in addition to being the widow of a rich man, Margaret was an heiress in her own right, being the only child of rich parents, Falkes was doing well, for John had bestowed on him not only Margaret but the custody of the castles of Windsor, Cambridge, Oxford, Northampton and Bedford.

  With Chester he captured the town of Worcester for the King, but his treatment of the prisoners did little to help the King’s cause for Falkes took a special delight in torture and he considered it a great sport to capture the rich and torture them with all kinds of methods which it was one of his delights to devise until they had given up all they possessed to save themselves from further torment.

  He had a special hatred for religious orders – or it might have been that he greatly coveted their treasures; but it seemed that if he came upon an abbey or a convent he must desecrate it. Sharing similar urges the King made no effort to deter him and in fact enjoyed being given accounts of Falkes’s adventures among the priests.

  But even he could be alarmed by what he had done and the story was often told of his fears after he had sacked St Alban’s Abbey. He had pillaged the town, mutilated and tortured the inhabitants but the Abbey was his real objective. Marching into the sacred building, overturning treasures as he went, he demanded that the Abbot be brought to him.

  The Abbot came, loudly demanding to know whether Falkes de Breauté knew that he was in a house of God. Falkes’s reply had been to laugh aloud and tell the Abbot that he wanted one hundred pounds of silver and if it was not given to him
without delay he would help himself to the treasures of the Abbey and burn it down.

  Knowing well the man with whom he had to deal and that he was capable of such an act of sacrilege the Abbot gave him the silver.

  Falkes had then left, taking sly looks about the place, noting the treasures for his future attention. That night he awoke from a terrible nightmare. He sat up in bed shouting that he was dying.

  Margaret, who must have been relieved at the thought of having the monster removed from her life, said: ‘You have had a dream … a nightmare. But nightmares can have meaning. What was the dream?’

  It was not often that de Breauté allowed himself civil conversation but shivering in his bed, with the terrible fear upon him, he was not the same man as the braggart who swaggered through towns terrifying all those who came near him.

  ‘I dreamed,’ he said, ‘that I was standing beneath the top tower of the Abbey at St Alban’s church when it fell upon me and where I had been there was nothing but powder … nothing of me remained.’

  ‘A dream full of portent,’ replied Margaret. ‘You desecrated the holy Abbey. It means God is displeased with you.’

  De Breauté would have laughed her to scorn at any other time, but he was truly shaken at this time.

  ‘You must go back to the Abbey,’ she advised him, ‘and ask pardon of the Abbot and the monks.’

  ‘You mean a penance …’

  ‘The King’s father did penance for the murder of Thomas à Becket.’

  ‘And you would ask me to do likewise?’

  ‘I ask nothing of you,’ she replied. ‘Experience has taught me that would be useless. I merely advise. You have desecrated a holy place … many holy places … but St Albans will have special favour in Heaven. You have been warned by Heaven. The meaning of your dream is clear. Unless you make restitution some fearful fate will overtake you.’