I must have been gawking like a rustic, for the queen suddenly leaned forward. “Master Beche,” she said, “what did you expect? A witch, a crone, a hag?”
She had read my thoughts, but I had the wit to reply, “No Madam, I expected to find a beautiful woman and I am not disappointed. May I thank you for receiving me so courteously.”
She caught the drift of my words and smiled. “I am afraid that Michael is over-protective. I found him years ago after,” she paused, “after my retirement from state affairs. I took him into my household and he has repaid me with almost fanatical devotion. Anyway,” she exclaimed, “enough. How is the court?”
I tried to supply her with all the latest gossip I knew, but I re alized it was only to give her time to appraise me. As I spoke, she scrutinized me carefully, and then abruptly interrupted to ask why I had come.
I told her that I was writing a history of her late husband’s reign and needed information about his deposition and death. I expected some emotional outburst but instead she was frank and moved swiftly to the point, as if repeating some lesson she had learnt by rote.
“Master Beche,” she exclaimed, “I deposed my husband because I hated him, but I took no part in his murder. Mortimer ordered that. I only learnt about it later and I know no more than you or anybody else. I have told the king this many, many times and I cannot understand why he does not follow the words of the Gospel and leave the dead to bury the dead.”
“Madam,” I tactfully replied, “my real purpose in coming here was not to reopen old wounds, but to seek the answer to several puzzling questions. First, why did the money supplied to your husband suddenly end on 21 July, two months before his death? Secondly, what did happen during Thomas Dunheved’s attack on Berkeley Castle in August, 1327? Thirdly, why were all of Dun-heved’s men thrown into jail where they suddenly died before trial? And why was Edward of Caernarvon buried at Gloucester and not in Westminster, among his ancestors?”
I paused for effect before adding, “Finally, madam, what prompted you to hire an old woman to prepare your husband’s body for burial when there were skilled court physicians at your beck and call? Who was this woman and where did she go?”
I knew my questions were insolent, but secure in my knowledge of the king’s protection, I was also aware that the queen could have played a cat-and-mouse game until the second coming. My bluntness served its purpose. The old vixen was visibly shaken. Her face blanched, her carmine-painted lips opened and shut like a landed fish and she could only regain her composure by lowering her head to examine a be-ringed finger.
“Your questions, Master Clerk, are both abrupt and impertinent,” she snapped. “But I shall ignore your rudeness for you will find that there is little profit in it. I can only answer your two final questions, as I am ignorant of the facts behind the rest. Mortimer supervised the king’s imprisonment and it was his men who beat off Dunheved’s attack and tracked down the rest of the band.” The queen then raised her head and smiled deprecatingly as if to imply these matters were now closed, before continuing.
“As to my husband’s burial in Gloucester. Well,” she shrugged as if the matter was of little concern, “the cathedral was close by, while Westminster was too far away.” The queen paused again as if to rearrange her dress, though I noticed her palms were damp with sweat. “The old woman,” she continued rather hurriedly, “was hired because I realized that Mortimer had murdered the king. A court physician would have only proclaimed it to the world, and the realm was far too disturbed to accept such a scandal. Who the old woman was and where she went, I cannot tell you because I do not know myself. Anyway, all this happened so long ago. You do understand, Master Beche?”
I understood, but I did not accept her plea of injured innocence. She had been Mortimer’s whore and must have loved him. Why else would she have tolerated him for another three years after her husband’s murder? In fact, common gossip has it that the night Mortimer was arrested, he was busy tumbling her, and when he was dragged away she was so distraught with grief that she screamed herself into hysterics. Moreover, the queen had been too glib. She maintained that Mortimer’s men had taken care of Dunheved, but I had seen the writ confining him to Pontefract and it had been signed and sealed by Isabella herself.
Nevertheless, at the time, I gave every impression that I was satisfied with her explanations. I was beginning to think of suitable phrases to cover a swift withdrawal, when the queen mother suddenly handed me a golden casket from the table beside her and asked me to examine the contents. I opened it and beneath a glass covering lay a human heart, slightly shrivelled, but still well-preserved.
“That,” Isabella quietly remarked, “is the heart of my husband and that is the main reason why I hired the old woman. If a court physician had removed it, Mortimer would have heard about it and been furious. You see, Master Clerk, once Edward was dead, my resentment against him also died. I remembered the golden years of our marriage and wanted his heart to be near me always.”
I confess that I was not shocked by the queen’s revelation, as I knew that the embalming of a corpse is common amongst the nobility. However, I was surprised that such an act had not been recorded. As I examined the heart of Edward II, I thought of Theo-bald de Tois. Do you remember him, Richard? He was a skilled physician who lived in Magpie Row at Oxford. We were the only ones who could tolerate him and he thanked us by regaling us with his medical knowledge. He constantly insisted that embalming was a mystery from the East to be practised only by the skilled. So what could an old woman from the Forest of Dean know about such an art? I studied the casket, gathered my wits and then put this to the queen in as disinterested a way as possible. She seemed a little taken aback but said that if I wanted the precise details, then I should have them. The old woman did not embalm the body, she had simply cut through the flesh, broken the ribs and removed the heart, tidying up the cuts and incisions with herbs and plaster. The queen claimed she remembered all this for she insisted that the corpse should show no sign of ill-use, so frightened was she of the possible consequences. She seemed intrigued by my knowledge of medicine and questioned me further, until I was reduced to a few, mumbling phrases.
Isabella hardly noticed. She seemed to have forgotten I was there. She just sat, straight-backed, her hands were tightly clenched and her eyes were staring fixedly past me as if she was looking at long-dead dreams.
“Your visit, Master Clerk,” she said in a half-whisper, “brings back ghosts. Edward of Kent and, above all, gentle Mortimer. A true knight, Master Clerk, but they dragged him, Master Clerk, dragged him by the heels through the filth of London. They hanged and quartered his lovely body, plucked out his heart and left it for the vermin.” She turned her fixed gaze on me. “You bring back nightmares, Master Beche. For the last time, leave the dead alone. I cannot and will not speak of these matters again.”
Our interview ended, Richard, with me voluble in my thanks and insistence that I could not accept her offer to stay the night in her fortress as my presence was urgently needed in London. The queen nodded understandingly. I kissed her hand and was shown out by Michael the Scot. In the courtyard, he returned both my sword and commission. As I mounted, he pricked my horse in its haunches to send it thundering across the lowered drawbridge to the jeers of the watching garrison. Eventually, the cob broke its gallop whilst my fury at such a graceless exit was outweighed by the relief of getting away unharmed.
Late winter darkness had now shrouded the narrow track, so I let my cob pick its own way down to the village. I could find no inn inn there but a green bush over a cottage door meant there was a tavern, and for a few coins, I managed to buy sleeping space on the vermin-ridden floor. I drank some of the wine I carried to warm my body as well as soothe my troubled mind, for Queen Isabella was clearly alarmed at my questions, yet she had spoken so smoothly as if what she knew and told me would go no further. But then she had let me go. I was still trying to find the solution to this when I fell into a fitful sleep.
I woke early next morning and, after breaking my fast on a slice of fatty bacon and a tankard of ale, I began my journey back to King’s Lynn. The weather made me forget the problems of the previous day. A hoar-frost had hardened the ground and a thick sea mist had swirled in over the countryside. A few miles out of Castle Rising, I found myself on a small track which, I remembered, would lead me down to the crossroads and the road to King’s Lynn. Dense forest ran along either side of it and, although the misty silence oppressed me, I only became alarmed when it was suddenly broken by the clink of chained mail. I loosened the sword in my scabbard and then swiftly drew it as a file of hooded figures rose out of the mist to block my way. They were armed with swords and spears and were evidently waiting for me to stop or dismount. I did neither but forced my horse from a trot into a swift gallop and bore down on them, yelling curses and waving my sword, like a veteran of a hundred successful charges. Surprised, they stood disconcerted until I was among them, hacking blindly with terror. I felt my sword cut and bite. A man screamed in agony, another reeled away, his face a bloody mask, and, suddenly, apart from a blow on the cantle of my saddle, I was through them and riding like the wind.
Eventually, I pulled off the track, stopped and, after listening vainly for sounds of pursuit, vomited my breakfast and finally paused to regain some composure. I realized that the ambush was no mere outlaw sortie. If it had been, I would have never known about it until the first shower of arrows. My attackers had been confident that my natural timidity would force a meek surrender, but my sudden charge and the thick concealing mist had foiled their ambush. The attackers could have only been Isabella’s men. The queen must have realized that I was aware of her lies. She probably wanted the sources for the questions I had asked, followed by my prompt disappearance into some marsh or unmarked forest grave. The thought of such a quick and violent end only increased my desperation to escape.
I had planned to return to King’s Lynn for my sumpter-pony and saddlebags, but I immediately decided to leave Norfolk as quickly as possible. I turned and travelled southeast, the direction my pursuers would least expect me to take. Four days later, I safely reached the port of Harwich and lodged at a dingy, waterside tavern, where I hoped to negotiate a passage for myself and my horse to one of the London ports.
Whilst staying there, I took stock of the situation and, as you may appreciate, Richard, I quickly reached the conclusion that the accepted story of Edward II’s murder at Berkeley Castle seemed to be permeated with lies. At first, this had been only a suspicion, but the queen’s glib responses and her attempt to kill me, only strengthened the case for further investigation. Yet, if the accepted story was to be discounted, how and with what could I replace it? The records had been exhausted and who else could help me? On my first night in Harwich I sat for hours listening to the sounds of the tavern as I tried to answer these questions. Finally, I drew up a list of all those who knew what had happened during Edward II’s imprisonment. I was forced to reduce it to a definite six. Edward himself, Mortimer, Guerney, Maltravers, Ockle and Isabella. But the latter was now unapproachable and the first two were dead, so that left the three murderers. According to the chronicle of St Paul, they had fled to the Low Countries, and then deeper into Germany. Only God knows what forsaken corner of the world shelters them, but finding at least one of them was my only hope. Sir Maurice Berkeley had remarked that Maltravers and Guerney were from Somerset, so I decided I would start there. I dropped all plans to return to London and began to negotiate a passage to one of the Somerset ports.
After a fruitless week’s search, I eventually compounded with a master of a cog going only as far as Poole, in the shire of Dorset. The king’s war with France, so the master pointed out, had led to enemy raids, not only against English shipping in the Narrow Seas, but all along the south coast. Consequently, there had been a sharp reduction in sea-traffic and I should think myself lucky to find a passage at all. The cog, The Christopher, was a sturdy craft, owned by a company of merchants, who used it to bring wool from the Yorkshire dales to the south coast, before exporting it to the Low Countries. It had called at Harwich for fresh supplies and, within three days of paying my fee, The Christopher was scudding south under a brisk northwesterly.
I was a little seasick at first, but soon I forgot it for once we sighted Dover, the entire atmosphere of the ship changed. The master constantly paced the poop, look-outs were doubled and the ship’s armament prepared in case of attack by the French. Once we were past Dover, the crew relaxed a little as the master brought his ship closer into shore, ready to bolt for harbour should an enemy ship be sighted. I joined the rest of the crew in carrying out their daily tasks, so at night I was too exhausted to think about my own problems. Four days after passing through the Dover Straits, we entered the Solent and the following evening sailed under Crawford Cliffs and into Poole Harbour.
The master helped me disembark my horse and gear. I paid him an extra half mark as a bonus and bade him farewell. For safety’s sake, I decided to join a military convoy for the journey inland and so safely reached the town of Dorchester. I stayed there for two days, resting and drawing up a report to the king. Naturally, it differs greatly from what I am telling you. I only informed him of the mystery surrounding the Dunheved conspiracy, Mortimer’s refusal to hand Edward II’s body over to Westminster and the fact that the queen possessed the heart of the dead king. I did not mention my growing disbelief of the entire account of his father’s death, nor how close I had come to my own outside Castle Rising. I concluded by informing him of my intended visit to Somerset to learn something about the whereabouts of Guerney and Maltravers. I pointed out that I could discover nothing about them in the records and so hoped that there were rumours about their movements in their own native county. I couched the letter in as an obsequious fashion as possible to make them think I had taken Chandos’s warning to heart.
I then sealed the letter and handed it over to the Mayor of Dorchester, who was going to a parliament at Westminster to answer another of the king’s interminable requests for more money for the French wars. The mayor had just received his brief from the town burgesses who had gathered in the great tap-room of the inn where I was staying. The mayor agreed to take the letter when I approached him after the meeting, and I invited him to sup with me. He was puffed out like a farm cockerel with his mission to London. He damned the wars and he damned Isabella, through whom the king could claim the throne of France and so turn Europe from the Hook of Holland to the Pyrenees into one vast battlefield.
“It’s all right for the king,” he confided to me, blowing a gale of ale fumes into my face, “riding out to do battle. But who profits? The seas are plagued with pirates. Markets are empty. The fields are stripped of corn and beasts, as well as the men who tend them. The roads are the prey of ex-soldiers, vagabonds and landless peasants. The king should stay at home, keep the peace and live off his own. The French crown, Paris, even France itself, not one or all of them together are worth the misery these wars have brought.”
The mayor’s complaints dominated our meal, but it was a welcome change to my own fears and worries. The next day I left him and his little town, surprised at such vehemence, but on my journey through the countryside, I saw what he meant. Fields which should have been ploughed lay brown and fallow. Meadows were devoid of livestock. Villages were full of women and old men while roving bands of outlaws terrorised the countryside. Twice I was attacked with stones and arrows and I only escaped unscathed due to being mounted.
Five days after leaving Dorchester, I reached Yeovil in Somerset, where I learnt to my delight that the sheriff was Sir Thomas Tweng, who was busy holding the shire court at Taunton Castle. You have probably never heard of Sir Thomas, Richard. He is a simple country knight but a close friend of the king and one of his confidants in the 1330 plot to overthrow Mortimer. If anyone knew anything about Guerney and Maltravers, it would be Sir Thomas. I hurried on to Taunton and arrived exhausted at The
Corn Stook which lies on the outskirts of the town, virtually under the huge walls of the great castle.
The following morning I hired one of the ostlers to take a message up to the castle, begging for immediate audience with Sir Thomas on business concerning the king. The ostler returned to inform me that he had delivered my message to the captain of the morning watch, and so I sat back and waited. The day passed and evening found me still sitting near the inn fire, anxious for a summons or a reply. I had almost despaired when the door of the inn was thrown open as a huge, pot-bellied man swept in. The landlord’s subservient attitude told me that this was Tweng. He ignored the bobbing servants and swung his gaze around the room and squinted at me through the poor light.
“Beche,” he bellowed, “are you the damned clerk who wants to see me?”
I nodded and rose to meet him. “Sit down, man,” he rumbled, as he slumped into the chair opposite me, his huge frame filling it to overflowing. He mopped a huge, bald head and inspected me intently.
“My apologies for so tardy a reply to your message,” he shouted, for all to hear. “That is why I came to see you myself, only too glad to get out of that damned, stuffy castle. Well,” he continued, unfastening the clasps of his cloak, “what can I do for you?”
He waved away my letters of introduction and so I told him about my investigations and my need for further information about Edward II’s murderers, Guerney, Maltravers and Ockle.
“The first two were Somerset knights,” I pointed out, “hence my presence in Taunton.”
Tweng pursed his lips and played with the hilt of his sword.
“Maltravers and Ockle,” he said, “fled to Germany and have never been traced. Guerney is dead. He died ten years ago while I was bringing him from Italy.”
The Death of a King Page 6