The She-Wolf

by Maurice Druon

  ‘And what complaint have you against your wife, Sire King? Has not Madame, the Queen, sent you fine clothes and kind letters, which we have read to you?’

  ‘Rogues, rogues,’ replied Edward, ‘you have shown me the clothes but you have not given them to me. You’re letting me rot away in this disgusting robe. And, as to the letters, why do you think that wicked woman has sent them, except to provide proof that she has shown me compassion? It is she, she and that wicked Mortimer who have given you orders to torture me. If it were not for her and that traitor, I am sure my children would hasten here to embrace me.’

  ‘Your wife, the Queen, and your children,’ replied Maltravers, ‘are too afraid of your cruelty. They have suffered too much from your temper and your wickedness to want to come near you.’

  ‘You can say what you like, you wicked man,’ said the King, ‘but the time will come when the tortures I am suffering will be avenged.’

  And he began to weep, his denuded chin hidden in his arms. He wept, but he did not die.

  Gournay and Maltravers were bored at Corfe, for every pleasure can pall, even that of torturing a king. Besides, Maltravers had left his wife, Eva, at Berkeley Castle with his brother-in-law; and then the people of the neighbourhood of Corfe got to know that Edward was detained there. After an exchange of messages with Mortimer, it was therefore decided to take Edward back to Berkeley.

  And when, once again, with the same escort, and now looking a little thinner and a little more bowed, he passed the great portcullis, the drawbridges and the two curtain walls, King Edward II, unhappy as he was, nevertheless felt a great relief, a sense almost of deliverance. His astrologer had lied.

  8

  ‘Bonum Est’

  QUEEN ISABELLA WAS already in bed, her golden tresses lying across her breast. Roger Mortimer came in without having himself announced, as was his privilege. From his expression the Queen knew what he was going to discuss, or rather re-discuss.

  ‘I’ve had news from Berkeley,’ he said in a voice he hoped sounded calm and detached.

  Isabella made no answer.

  The window was half-open to the September night. Mortimer went over and flung it wide. For a moment he stood there looking out over the great, crowded town of Lincoln, lying below the castle. There were still a few lights showing here and there. Lincoln was the fourth town in the kingdom after London, Winchester and York. One of the quarters of Hugh Despenser the Younger’s body had been sent there ten months ago. The Court, having moved from Yorkshire, had been in residence here for a week.

  Isabella looked at Mortimer’s high shoulders and curling hair silhouetted in the frame of the window, dark against the night sky. At this particular moment she felt no love for him.

  ‘Your husband seems to be clinging very obstinately to life,’ Mortimer went on, turning round. ‘And his life is a danger to the peace of the realm. They are still conspiring in the manors of Wales to free him. The Dominicans have had the impudence to preach in his favour even in London, where the riots which took place last July, as you know, may well occur again. Edward is no danger in himself, I grant you, but he is a pretext for sedition by our enemies. I ask you to issue the order, for without it there can be no safety either for you or your sons.’

  Isabella sighed in weary exasperation. Why didn’t he give the order himself? Why did he not take the decision on his own responsibility? After all, he was all-powerful in the kingdom.

  ‘Sweet Mortimer,’ she said, ‘I have already told you that you will not get that order from me.’

  Roger Mortimer closed the window; he was afraid of losing his temper.

  ‘But why, after all,’ he said, ‘having suffered so many ordeals and run so many risks, do you now insist on being the enemy of your own safety?’

  She shook her head and replied, ‘I cannot do it. I would rather run any risk than come to that. Roger, I pray you, we must not stain our hands with that blood.’

  Mortimer laughed shortly.

  ‘I do not understand,’ he replied, ‘why you should so suddenly have this respect for the blood of your enemies. You showed no reluctance in the contemplation of the blood of the Earl of Arundel, the blood of the Despensers, the blood of Baldock, indeed all the blood that has been shed in the town squares. There have even been certain nights when I have thought that shed blood was not altogether displeasing to you. And are not our dear Sire Edward’s hands redder than ours could ever be? Would he not willingly have spilt my blood, and yours, had we given him the chance? You cannot be a king, Isabella, nor a queen, if you are afraid of blood; you can only retire to a convent, take the veil of a nun, and resign both love and power.’

  For a moment they gazed into each other’s eyes. His were the colour of flint and seemed to glow too brightly under his thick brows in the light of the candles; the white scar marked a lip that had too cruel a curve. Isabella was the first to lower her eyes.

  ‘Remember, Mortimer, that he once reprieved you,’ she said. ‘He must be thinking at this moment that if he hadn’t yielded to the prayers of the barons, the bishops, and indeed to mine, and had had you beheaded as he ordered to be done to Thomas of Lancaster …’

  ‘That’s no argument. Of course I remember; but it is precisely because I do not want to suffer such regrets one day as he must have now. Your compassion for him seems to me both strange and obstinate.’

  He was silent for a moment.

  ‘Do you still love him?’ he said. ‘I can see no other reason for your behaviour.’

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Is that why you want one more proof?’ she asked. ‘Is this mad jealousy of yours ever to come to an end? Haven’t I sufficiently proved before the whole kingdom of France, and the whole kingdom of England if it comes to that, and even before my son, that there is no other love but the love of you in my heart? What more can I do?’

  ‘Simply what I ask you, nothing more. But I see that you will not make up your mind to it. I realize that the cross you made over your heart, which was to make us allies and give us a single will, was only a pretence to you. I realize that fate has led me to plight my troth to a weak creature!’

  Yes, he was jealous, that was the fact. Though he was the all-powerful Regent, though every appointment was in his gift, though he was the young King’s guardian, and lived openly as man and wife with the Queen before all the barons, Mortimer was still jealous. ‘But is he completely mistaken in being so?’ Isabella suddenly wondered. For the danger of jealousy is that it forces its object to consider whether there is any justification for the reproaches. And thus certain fleeting emotions, to which one has paid no attention, suddenly take on a clearer hue. How strange it was! Isabella was sure she hated Edward as much as it was possible for a woman to hate; she thought of him with contempt, disgust and rancour combined. And yet … And yet the memory of rings exchanged, of the coronation, of her children being born; memories not so much of him but of herself; the memory merely of having believed she loved him; all this was holding her back now. She could not make up her mind to give the order for the death of the father of her children. ‘And they call me the She-wolf of France!’ she thought. The saint is never so saintly, nor the cruel man ever so utterly cruel as one supposes. No one can see into another’s heart all the time.

  And then Edward, even though dethroned, was still a king. Though dispossessed, despoiled and imprisoned, he was still a royal personage. And Isabella was a queen herself, and brought up to be one. Throughout her childhood she had had before her an example of truly royal majesty, incarnate in a man who, by blood and coronation, knew that he stood above all other men, and made others recognize it. To take the life of a subject, even if he were the greatest lord in the kingdom, was never more than a crime. But the act of taking a royal life involved sacrilege and was the negation of that quality of intangibility with which sovereigns were invested.

  ‘And that, Mortimer, you cannot understand, because you are not a king, and you were not born a king�
��s son.’

  Too late she realized she had thought out loud.

  The Baron of the Marches, the descendant of a companion of William the Conqueror, the Justiciar of Wales, took the blow hardly. He took two paces backwards and bowed.

  ‘I do not believe it was a king, Madame, who gave you back your throne; but it seems to be a waste of time to expect you to agree to that. Being neither a king nor a king’s son, my efforts for you have brought me but little merit. Therefore, let your enemies free your royal husband, or rather, go and give him his liberty yourself! Your powerful brother of France will no doubt then protect you, as he did so well when you had to fly to Hainaut, supported in your saddle by me. Mortimer, being no king, and his life having no such protection against the mischances of fortune, will depart, Madame, and find refuge elsewhere before it is too late, outside the kingdom whose queen loves him so little that he feels there is nothing more for him to do there.’

  Upon which he went to the door. His anger was controlled; he did not bang the oak door but closed it gently, and the sound of his footsteps slowly faded away.

  Isabella knew Mortimer’s pride well enough to know he would not come back. She jumped out of the bed, ran in her nightdress through the corridors of the castle, caught Mortimer up, seized him by his coat, clung to his arm.

  ‘Stay, stay, sweet Mortimer, I beseech you!’ she cried without caring who heard her. ‘I am only a woman, I need your counsel and your support. Stay, stay, please, and act as you think fit.’

  She was weeping and clinging to him, nestling against that breast and that heart without which she could not live.

  ‘I only want what you want,’ she said again.

  Servants, drawn there by the noise, appeared and immediately hid themselves, embarrassed at being witnesses to this lovers’ quarrel.

  ‘Do you really want what I want?’ he asked, taking the Queen’s face in his hands. ‘Very well, then! Guards! Go and summon my lord Orleton at once.’

  For some months past, and for an absurd reason, there had been a certain coolness between Mortimer and Adam Orleton. It had been due to that bishopric of Worcester to which the prelate had got the Pope to provide him while Mortimer had promised the King’s agreement to another candidate. Had Mortimer only known that his friend wanted that bishopric, it would all have been perfectly simple. But Orleton had acted secretly, and Mortimer, having given his word, did not now want to have to go back on it. He had brought the question up in Parliament, when it was sitting in York, and had had the revenues of the see of Worcester sequestrated. Orleton, who was therefore no longer Bishop of Hereford and was not Bishop of Worcester either, felt this to be ungrateful in the man he had helped escape from the Tower. The affair was still being debated, and Orleton still followed the Court wherever it went.

  ‘Mortimer is bound to end by needing me one day,’ he thought, ‘and then I shall get the diocese of my choice.’

  That day, or rather that night, had now arrived. Orleton realized it as soon as he entered Queen Isabella’s room; she had gone back to bed, and Mortimer was striding up and down. The Queen still had traces of tears on her face. If they were so little embarrassed by the prelate’s presence, it could only mean that they really needed him.

  ‘Madame the Queen,’ said Mortimer, ‘considers, and with reason, that because of the conspiracies of which you know, her husband’s life imperils the peace of the realm, and she is concerned that God should be so slow to call him to Him.’

  Adam Orleton looked at Isabella, Isabella looked at Mortimer, and then she turned her eyes back to the Bishop and nodded in assent. Orleton smiled briefly, not with cruelty, nor even really with irony, but with an expression rather of chaste concern.

  ‘Madame the Queen finds herself faced with the problem which is always confronting those who are in charge of kingdoms,’ he replied. ‘So as not to destroy a single life, must one risk the death of many others?’

  Mortimer turned to Isabella, and said: ‘Do you hear?’

  He was pleased by the Bishop’s support and merely regretted not having thought of this argument himself.

  ‘This is a matter of the safety of the people,’ Orleton went on, ‘and it is to us bishops that people turn for the elucidation of the Divine Will. Of course the Gospels forbid us to kill. But the law of the Gospels does not apply to kings when they condemn their subjects to death. But I had thought, my lord, that the gaolers you have appointed about the fallen king were going to spare you these problems.’

  ‘The gaolers appear to have exhausted their resources,’ replied Mortimer. ‘And they will take no further action without written instructions.’

  Orleton nodded his head but made no reply.

  ‘And a written order,’ Mortimer went on, ‘may fall into other hands than those for which it is intended; it can even be used by those who carry it out against those who gave it. You understand me?’

  Orleton smiled once more. Did they take him for a fool?

  ‘In other words, my lord,’ he said, ‘you wish to send the order, yet not send it.’

  ‘I would rather send an order which would be clear to those for whom it is intended, but obscure to those who should know nothing of it. It is on this I wish to consult you, for you are a man of resource. If you will give me your help, that is.’

  ‘And you ask that, my lord, from a poor Bishop who has no throne, nor even a diocese in which to plant his crozier?’

  It was Mortimer’s turn to smile.

  ‘Now, now, my lord Orleton, let us talk of these things no more. You have vexed me very much, you know. If you had only told me what you wanted. But since you are so intent on it, I will no longer oppose you. Worcester is yours, I promise it. And you’re still my friend, you know that too.’

  The Bishop nodded his head. Yes, he knew it. He felt as friendly as ever towards Mortimer; their recent quarrel had changed nothing, and they had only to come face to face to be aware of it. They were linked by too many memories, too many conspiracies as well as a sort of mutual admiration. And this very evening, for instance, when Mortimer, having at last dragged the long-awaited consent from the Queen, found himself in a difficulty, who did he send for? The Bishop with the sloping shoulders, the duck-like walk, and eyes that were short-sighted from too much work on manuscripts at Oxford. They were such great friends indeed that they had forgotten the Queen, who was staring at them with her huge blue eyes and feeling unhappy.

  ‘It was that fine sermon of yours on the text “Doleo caput meum”, and everyone remembers it, which made it possible to get rid of the bad King,’ said Mortimer. ‘And it was you again who obtained his abdication.’

  Here was a return of gratitude. Orleton acknowledged the compliments with a bow.

  ‘And now you want me to finish the task,’ he said.

  There was a writing-table in the room, with pens and paper. Orleton asked for a knife because he could write only with a pen cut by himself. It helped him to think. Mortimer did not interrupt his reflections.

  ‘The order need not be long,’ said Orleton after a moment.

  He was staring straight to his front with an amused air. He had clearly forgotton that the death of a man was in question; he was feeling the pride and satisfaction of a writer who had just solved a difficult linguistic problem. With his eyes bent close to the table he wrote a single phrase in a clear handwriting, sanded it, and handed the paper to Mortimer, saying: ‘I will even seal the letter with my own seal, if you and Madame the Queen think it better not to apply yours.’

  He seemed very pleased with himself.

  Mortimer went close to a candle. The letter was in Latin. He read rather slowly: ‘Eduardum occidere nolite timere bonum est.’ Then, looking at the Bishop, he said, ‘Eduardum occidere, I understand that all right; nolite: do not … timere: fear … Bonum est: it is good …’

  Orleton smiled.

  ‘Which is it: “Do not kill Edward, it is good to fear”,’ asked Mortimer, ‘or: “Do not fear to kill Edward, it
is a good thing”? Where is the comma?’

  ‘There isn’t one,’ replied Orleton. ‘The Will of God will be made plain to the understanding of the letter’s recipient. But no one can be blamed for the letter itself.’

  Mortimer was somewhat perplexed.

  ‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘I don’t know whether Maltravers or Gournay understands Latin.’

  ‘Brother William, whom you asked me to send to them, understands it well enough. And then the messenger can say, but say only, that all action resulting from this order must remain without trace.’

  ‘And are you really prepared to seal it with your own seal?’ asked Mortimer.

  ‘I shall do so,’ said Orleton.

  He really was a good friend. Mortimer accompanied him to the bottom of the stairs, then came back to the Queen’s room.

  ‘Sweet Mortimer,’ said Isabella, ‘don’t leave me to sleep alone this night.’

  The September night was not cold enough to make her shiver so much.

  9

  The Red-hot Poker

  COMPARED TO THE HUGE fortresses of Kenilworth and Corfe, Berkeley was a relatively small castle. Its stones had a rosy glow and its dimensions made it habitable. It lay immediately next to the cemetery that surrounded the church where the gravestones, in a very few years, became covered with a small green moss, fine as a silk cloth.44

  Thomas de Berkeley was a decent enough young man, who bore his neighbour no ill-will. Nevertheless, he had no reason to show any particular kindness to ex-King Edward II, who had kept him in prison at Wallingford for four years, together with his father Maurice de Berkeley, who had died during their imprisonment. Moreover, he could not but be devoted to his powerful father-in-law, Roger Mortimer, whose eldest daughter he had married in 1320. He had followed him through the rebellion and had been freed by him the year before. Thomas received the considerable sum of a hundred shillings a day for lodging and guarding the fallen King. Nor were his wife, Marguerite Mortimer, and his sister Eva, the wife of Maltravers, wicked people.