Isabel the Fair

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  There were more entertainers and bursts of laughter and interchanges of compliments, and before supper was over King Philip delighted with his new son-in-law’s appreciation, had given him the amusing little dwarf to take back to England.

  “In case you should be bored with your immature wife!” said Isabel, jabbing at a manchet of bread with the jewelled fork which her favourite brother had given her. Her little spurt of laughter made a jest of the words, but there were tears in her eyes.

  While all the fine company danced in the hall Isabel’s ladies prepared her for bed. She shivered, listening to their broadly jesting advice, and could not tell whether it was from excitement or fear. When the hilarious laughter was at its height she was borne along in yet another procession — the final procession of the day which must end in the bridal chamber. With downcast eyes she swept a good-night curtsy to her father when he released her hand at the door. People crowded about her, holding torches high above their heads. “God send an heir for England!” they cried, when the Archbishop blessed the great damasked bed. She dared not lift her eyes to the other side of it where Edward stood in unaccustomed silence.

  At a sign from her father the room began to empty. They were all going away at last. Her mother was kissing her as fervently as though she were going on a journey — the first stage of that journey which was marriage, presumably. Bringnette was undressing her by the warmth of the brazier. Taking off her jewelled slippers and her fur-lined wrap, Isabel pulled the thick cloud of her hair about her slender breasts. At the last moment she clung to the old lady’s loving hands. “There, there, my sweet!” comforted Bringnette. “There is no going back to virgin modesty now.” And Isabel, to whom fate had given a personable husband, was woman enough to know that she did not really want to.

  At last she was lying naked between the sheets. The curtains had been drawn and for the first time a man lay beside her. Together they listened for the click of the latch, the dying away of laughter down the tower stairs. All the lights had been snuffed out save the little night-lamp which shone through the richness of the bed hangings like a wavering yellow star. Tense and helpless as some small wild creature caught in a snare, Isabel stared at the comforting star, waiting for initiation into the reality from which sprang all the half-understood jests and sniggerings she had heard.

  She felt Edward reach for her hand. Heard him mutter something about hoping the whole inquisitive rabble would break their pestilential necks on the stairs, and then, with a spurt of high-pitched laughter, begin to tell some fantastic story about a prying page who had hidden himself under some English duchess’s bridal bed. Gradually it dawned upon her that her new husband, whom she had thought of as so mature and experienced, was as nervous as herself. A tender concern informed her, making her forgetful of self. She sat up in the great bed, clasping her hands about her knees as she did when telling legends to her younger cousin, Philip of Valois. Guided by her growing maturity she began discussing the events of the day, touching lightly upon this moment or that, criticizing each guest with clever mimicry, striving to set handsome Edward Plantagenet at ease. He enjoyed her pungent comments, the same things amused them both and soon they were laughing together uncontrollably. Until Isabel, becoming breathless, pressed both hands to her brow and moaned through the remnants of her mirth: “Oh, my poor head!”

  Edward was all concern at once.

  “I do suffer from these devastating headaches. Whenever I am emotionally upset, the doctors say,” she explained. “But surely only the cruelest spite of witchcraft could have sent me one to-night!”

  ‘My poor sweet!”

  “It will pass,” Isabel assured him with desperate optimism. “But my women waked me at dawn and now — ”

  “Now it is long past midnight. And you must be cold perched up there hugging your knees.” He pulled her down into his arms and began kissing her until her senses stirred deliciously. Eager for his embraces, she lay mute until, too soon, his lips released her. “In truth you are tired to death, you sweet child,” he whispered with compunction, not guessing at the strength of her awakening desire.

  The charcoal in the brazier had burned low. He lay back and yawned, holding her gently against him as though she were indeed a child. It was warm and dark in the bridal bed, his shoulder made a comfortable resting-place and the hot spiced wine of their loving-cup had made her sleepy. Gradually the waves of pain in her forehead quietened. Desire gave place to drowsiness, and Isabel fell asleep.

  When she waked sunlight lay bright upon her eyes. The damask hangings had been drawn back and Edward, resplendent in his scarlet bed wrap, was standing by the open window. “It is a hunting morning with no frost,” he was saying as she began to stir, “and I must ride my new sorrel.”

  “I am married. I am Queen of England,” remembered Isabel almost automatically. Then, as she pushed back the golden weight of her hair and came slowly into the day’s consciousness, her mind plunged back to review her wedding night. “And I must face my chattering women and my fondly probing mother and — worst of all — the concern in

  Bringnette’s eyes,” she thought, “and tell them all that my handsome bridegroom has been — kind.”

  Chapter Two

  For Isabel the days that followed were an almost bewildering succession of excitements. Tournaments and pageants followed each other, each more gorgeous than the last. Every meal was a merry feast, each night brought masques and dancing. All the delights which a young girl could dream of were packed into the short, sunny space of her honeymoon. And she herself was always the centre of attraction, reigning as Queen of Beauty over it all.

  Newly awakened to the lusty urges of her own nature, she sometimes wished that Edward were less gentle and more passionate. Lack of experience prevented her from realizing that he was by no means in love with her. She found him good company, and all the more amusing to talk to because he was less hemmed about with formality than were her own relatives. Because he looked so splendid on a charger she was proud to see him wear her favour in the lists, and clapped her hands with joy when he broke the lance of her uncle Louis of Clermont. And because he had all the visible attributes of an athlete even those spectators who bore no love towards Edward backed him as a probable champion. But Edward, unlike the rest, was by no means fiercely competitive. He enjoyed his sport indolently, mostly for the pleasure it gave him to use well-trained eye and muscle. And when, to the momentary dismay of his hosts, his brother-in-law the Duke of Brabant unhorsed him in the second bout, his backers were surprised to see the Plantagenet pick himself up smiling. He was quite cheerful and ungrudging about his defeat, and seemed content to sit beside the Queen of Beauty to watch his erstwhile opponent charge on to further triumphs.

  “Do you really not mind?” asked Isabel, trying to hide her own disappointment.

  “Why should I? It is very pleasant sitting here with you beside a cheerful brazier and watching the other fellows hacking bits out of each other/’ said Edward, flinching a little as she insisted in the best tradition upon binding up a slight gash on his wrist.

  “You mean,” she faltered, “that all this seems to you merely child’s play? But you went to war with the great King Edward.”

  “Oh yes. He saw to that.”

  Isabel stared, uncomprehending. She was surprised that he did not seem proud of the fact, and still more surprised to sense some antipathy towards that great soldier. But Edward only laughed at her shocked perplexity. He pulled the coveted broom flower from his helmet and stuck it coquettishly in the folds of her wimple where its golden sweetness vied with the golden lights of her brown eyes. “My dear Isabel,” he said, “whatever you and your ladies may imagine, I do assure you there is nothing particularly glamorous about war. One of my sisters was born in the middle of a Crusade and I myself was born in a beleaguered Welsh castle, so I should know!”

  “Did — did your poor mother get enough to eat?”

  “I am quite sure she did. My father would have s
een to that too, even though she bore me in a small, bare room with men-at-arms tramping about outside the door. It was at Caernarvon. And actually he had just taken the castle from our unruly Welsh and they were still outside the gates, shouting for a ruler of their own. The Welsh can be as pertinacious as they are brave, and my father was all for consolidating his realm. So as soon as my mother’s women had clothed my puling nakedness he carried me out on to the battlements in the hollow of his shield and showed me to them. ‘Here is your Prince,’ he shouted in that far-carrying voice of his. ‘Cannot speak a word of English, and born on Welsh soil. Edward, my firstborn.’ They were quite pleased, I believe. And that is how I came to be Prince of Wales. Until my father died hurrying to lay siege to some other castle up in Scotland. He had been widowed, and eight years married to your aunt by then.”

  “Did each of his Queens always have to go campaigning with him?”

  “He expected it of them. You would not like your marriage to be like that, would you?”

  “N-no,” admitted Isabel, who was beginning to suspect that some of the unpleasant things her ladies had told her about the country across La Manche might come true. “But I should like to be adored as your own mother was. The name of Eleanor of Castile is a by-word here for a woman who enjoys a long and happy married love. Was it true what my brother Philip heard about the thirteen crosses?”

  “Quite true. She was travelling up north to join my father as usual when she caught a dangerous fever. And he, whom nothing could ever deflect from his military purposes, left off battering the Scots and travelled down day and night to reach her. But she died, God assoil her, before he came. It must have been terrible for him. We brought her body home to Westminster. The journey took thirteen days. And in his agony of grief my father had a stone cross of exquisite craftsmanship erected in every place where her coffin had rested. The one nearest my palace I often pass on my way to the City of London. It stands in a thriving little hamlet beside the Thames. Chere Reine, the villagers call it now, because of his dear Queen’s cross.”

  Isabel listened to him enthralled. With her vivid imagination, strengthened by all the romances which she loved to read, she saw herself as a second Chere Reine. She imagined the people strewing roses in her path, a handsome devoted husband standing by her side and the legend of their marital life going down to history.

  But truth to tell, here in France — although they had been married only a few days — her husband was not always at her side. He liked to go off hunting or horse-racing with the younger men of the company. He grew restless sometimes and talked of going back to England, urging her to have her baggage packed in good time while the wind served.

  “Why, mon cher, when my father has turned his kingdom upside down to provide us with so much happiness

  here?” asked Isabel, who had not yet come to know the difference between happiness and pleasure.

  “You forget that I, too, have a kingdom to attend to,” Edward would remind her.

  “But only yesterday I heard you boasting to that odious Duke of Austria that you had been able to leave it in the hands of a capable Regent. Do you not trust him?”

  “As myself. In fact, he is much more capable than I,” said Edward, with a diffidence which she found so endearing that she was prepared to give up her own way to please him. Even though he added a warning that once they were back at Westminster there would be all manner of State business to attend to and he might often have to leave her to her own devices.

  During the second week of her honeymoon Isabel found herself already looking round for company. She was no horsewoman, and it was while Edward was out hunting in the forests around Boulogne that she really came to know and love his step-mother. Although Marguerite was an outdoor sort of person who would sooner have been out hunting too, Isabel would coax her to sit by the fire and tell her about the country in which all her own future would have to be passed — a future which now seemed to be looming very close. “Tell me, Madame, do you really like living in England?”

  “It is good to be back on a visit to France,” admitted the tall Dowager-Queen. “But please call me Marguerite, my dear, and do not look so depressed. I assure you the English have been very good to me.”

  “The people, do you mean? Or the nobles?”

  “I was really thinking of the people, who are much less subservient than ours over here. The great barons — men like Lancaster and Warwick and Pembroke — each keep a standing army of retainers and are very jealous and quarrelsome. But it seems to me that it is usually the town burghers and the rich wool merchants who have the last word about things which concern the country as a whole.”

  Isabel smoothed the rolled-back flaps of her becoming headdress and stretched her daintily shod toes to the blaze. “Will they like me, do you suppose?”

  The older woman surveyed her with admiring amusement. It would have been easy to say, as Edward had, that the English were bound to like their new little Queen because she was beautiful. But, although incapable of jealousy, Marguerite did not. “You will do wisely to win their love,” she advised soberly. “As long as you act kindly they will protect you.”

  “Protect me?” Up went Isabel’s short, haughty little nose. “Do you, in that crazy country, look for protection from a lot of unwashed peasants? Have I not a husband who is their King?”

  It occurred to Marguerite that even kings who persisted in annoying their nobles might be glad of the protection of their people. Though never, of course, the kind of king her own husband had been. “The wealth of England lies on the backs of her sheep,” she murmured, with a kind of contemplative irrelevance. “And her farmers and merchants have a strong sense of fair play.”

  “You have two sons of your own, have you not?” asked Isabel, politely turning the conversation.

  “Thomas, who is seven, and little Edmund. They were too young to come.”

  “And you adore them,” said Isabel gently, observing the lovely smile of motherhood that warmed her companion’s face. “Yet you bear no grudge to Edward for inheriting everything. Nor to me, I think, because my dower is to be made up partly of your property.”

  “That was agreed to, was it not, at the time when I married the late King and you were betrothed to his son? Besides, I prefer to live simply. The effect of so much camping among my husband’s soldiers, perhaps.”

  Isabel got up and kissed her impulsively. “I think you must be the most unself-seeking person I have ever met,” she decided laughingly, “and we are both fortunate to have you. Edward must love you very much to have named his fine new ship after you.”

  “He had not met you then, and I had been able to — to smooth things over sometimes between him and his father.”

  “Then I was right in thinking that they did not get on very well?”

  “They did not always see eye to eye.”

  By the humorous quirk at the comers of the Dowager-Queen’s mouth her niece guessed this to be a wild understatement. “What did they disagree about?” she asked, with eager interest.

  But Marguerite had heard the clatter of horses down in the courtyard and made it an excuse to go over to the window. “Oh, a variety of things. They were so utterly different in temperament,” she answered, with calculated carelessness. “Look, the hunt is back already, and judging by the spattered state they are in they must have had a very good day.”

  Servants were already hurrying to and fro past the door of the solar where the two Queens sat, laying out fresh linen for King Edward and filling the great wooden tub with steaming water for his bath. While Marguerite slipped tactfully away, Isabel ran out to the stairs to meet him. But, hot and dusty as he was, he lingered by the great window in the hall reading a letter which a messenger had brought from England. He looked inordinately pleased as he read, and once or twice he laughed aloud as though the writer had been anything but dull. Isabel saw him refold the letter and thrust it into the unbuttoned front of his tunic, and make some answer to the waiting messenger.
Then he came running up the shallow, curving stairs as blithely as a boy. “We are going home the day after to-morrow,” he shouted, seeing Isabel waiting at the top. He tilted up her chin and kissed her briefly in passing. “The Earl of Cornwall has it all arranged. My Regent, you know. There will be a fine welcome for us at Dover, and I have sent word to him to have Roger Bigod’s wife and the Countess of Hereford there to attend you on your journey to Westminster.”

  Isabel stiffened with anger. She stood immobile beneath his carelessly planted kiss. “And what will my parents feel about such curtailment of their hospitality?” she enquired coldly. “Let us stay a little longer.”

  He looked down at her as if seeing her only through the haze of some pleasant preoccupation of his own. His lips were smiling, though their amused tenderness, she felt, was not for her. He detached her fingers gently, kissed the tips of them with absent kindliness. But he shook his head. To Isabel he suddenly seemed to be all of twenty-three and terribly remote. “No, no, it is all arranged,” he said irritably. “Tell that good old Bringnette of yours to see that the other women pack your gear.”

  “And my parents?” repeated Isabel, in the small voice of a stricken child.

  “I will explain to them.”

  What Or how to explain he did not know. It was just that he could no longer stay away. But soon she heard him recounting to his servants some ludicrous incident in the chase and, in the midst of their hilarious laughter, splashing and singing in his bath.

  Isabel betook herself to the castle chapel to pray. “I have a vile temper and I am often jealous,” she whispered. “But, oh, Mother of God, he is so good to look upon! And more than anything I want a wonderful love affair which will last me all my life, so that I never glance sideways at any other man and my husband sets up thirteen crosses when I die!”