“My messenger, just when I need one,” punned Isabel, with the first light-hearted laugh that had passed her lips since supper.
“It will be my heart’s happiness to serve your Grace in all things.”
Isabel regarded him with relief as he knelt on one knee before her. He was young and impulsive like herself, and as well as being able to make pretty speeches, he appeared to be moved by a genuine desire to help her rather than by personal interest as the barons had been. She had suffered unaccustomed humiliation, and in the midst of her bewilderment in this strange country she allowed her hurt pride to salve itself for a moment or two in the admiration manifest in his eyes. “I pray you have someone bring me pen and paper,” she said, momentarily forgetful of her bitterness. “Then wait outside my door, Sir Robert, and one of my ladies will bring you the letter as soon as it is done,”
By the light of a single tall candle she poured out her heart to her people at home. She guessed that women like Marguerite kept their griefs and disappointments to themselves, but the Almighty had not made her in that mould. She was Isabel the Fair whom no man should slight, and when she suffered she must speak or suffocate. If her father should think she was making a mountain from a molehill, or upsetting the political situation, at least her youngest brother Charles would understand. She had always been able to coax dear Charles to her way of thinking. And it was cruel — cruel — for a husband whom she adored to neglect her for some self-assured young man on her first night in England, and to offend her uncles and to give away the Charlemagne jewels. The scratching of her angrily moving quill and the occasional plop of wood-ash from the fire were the only sounds in the room. The embroidered coverlet had long since been turned down and the bed curtains pulled invitingly back. She started when Ghislaine, moving softly on slippered feet, touched her warningly on the shoulder. “It is getting late. Madam. If the King should come on you unawares and see what you are at — ” she whispered, with a scared glance towards the door.
“What do I care? It would do him good to read what people think of his odious friend,” thought Isabel, and went on writing.
“The King must surely be coming any moment now,” warned Bringnette, an hour later.
And in the end Ghislaine had fallen asleep and had to be wakened to take the letter to Robert Le Messager who was still stationed faithfully outside. By the time the two women had undressed her both fire and candle had burned low. Isabel dismissed them repentantly and stood for a moment or two alone by the window. Only a horse whinnying down in the stables and the distant tramp of a sentry’s feet somewhere out on the battlements broke the Kentish silence. Castle, town and shipping all seemed to be asleep. Dawn was breaking in the east but still the King had not come. “I am Queen of England,” Isabel told herself sternly, and climbed shivering into her empty marriage bed to cry into her pillow like a broken-hearted child.
Chapter Four
In a room in the Tower of London Bringnette and Ghislaine had laid out the Queen’s Coronation finery ready for the morrow, and because she appreciated her husband’s taste in such matters Isabel had made him promise to come for a preview of the gold and silver dress. He had kept his promise, but seemed unusually morose. As the late February evening closed in, fog had drifted up the Thames, obscuring what little light the thickness of the walls allowed, so that his sullen gaze fell first upon her jewels glittering out of the gloom as they lay upon her table.
“But why two crowns?” he enquired, picking up one of them and twirling it round on his fingers. “To emphasize that the Capets are more important than the Plantagenets?”
She had meant to tell him the fascinating history of each and to ask which she should wear, but his manner goaded her into a spiteful retort. “Perhaps my father was afraid you might give one of them away before the Coronation.”
Edward put down the golden thing as though it had bitten him, and went to stare out at the murky river. “If there is a Coronation,” he said.
Isabel looked up at him sharply and dismissed her women with a gesture. “I have heard someone say that before,” she recalled uneasily.
“Guy of Warwick, probably. Or Lancaster. It was the monotonous burden of their argument at the Council Meeting last night.”
Isabel was pleased to learn that it had been a meeting, and not Piers Gaveston, who had kept him from her bed until the early hours of the morning. But the thought of having all their splendid plans for the Coronation spoiled was alarming. She crossed the little room and stood beside him. “You mean they want to postpone it?”
“No. To prevent it. As you very well know.”
“I?” Isabel stared at him in amazement as he swung round on her accusingly.
“All your precious relatives turned up in strength to back them. Otherwise I scarcely think even Warwick would have dared to give me his orders.” Edward began to tramp angrily up and down the room. “They want me to send Piers Gaveston away again.”
Although her hopes soared high at the thought, she did not want anything to happen which would diminish her husband’s power. “But how can they? How can mere subjects dictate what you do? I had supposed you were popular — their lionized Longshanks’ son. Do they not want you for their king?”
“Oh, yes, as far as I know. They certainly have no one else in mind,” answered Edward wearily. “But the devil of it is they have not yet taken their oaths of allegiance. I was always up in Scotland, or somewhere. And should they refuse to do so tomorrow some of them may feel free to band together with their cursed private armies and force me to do whatever they want.”
To Isabel, who knew nothing of the horrors of civil war, the natural answer was to fight. She could have wished that his anger sounded a little more determined, and less petulant. But, close as her wishes ran to those of his barons, her instinctive desire was to comfort him. She knelt beside him, her hands outstretched across his knees. “My dear, I swear I know nothing of this. I knew they were angry and offended, yes. A little sorry for me perhaps that first day we landed at Dover — if such self-important-looking men can be sorry for other people’s hurts. But since I share your throne, whatever they may do that undermines your power will be against my own interests too. How can you suppose that I would have tried to stir up trouble against you?”
“Not intentionally, perhaps. But you must have written home complaining of this and that. Your father, who so lately seemed to be my generous friend, now writes subjecting me to unwarrantable questioning about my private life.” Edward moved impatiently, shifting her arms from his knees. “I am getting tired of your childish jealousy, which makes you look for slights where none were intended.”
Isabel sprang to her feet. She could scarcely refrain from hitting him. “You have no right to be always speaking of me as though I were a child!” she cried. “Am I not your wife? And, if it come to that, have I no cause for complaint, left alone while you spend most of your time talking and laughing with Gaveston?”
“A pretty gratitude, I must say, when we are planning to return French hospitality with the most splendid Coronation — ”
But Isabel cut recklessly across his indignant self-justification. “And giving him half my father’s gifts! Your Barons were furious, and even Marguerite was shocked.”
Infatuated with Gaveston as he was, Edward knew that his foolish generosity had been indefensible. He rose with a sigh and taking her by the shoulders, tried to turn her passionate face towards him. “Oh, my dear, I am sorry — talking to you like that,” he apologized, with the sweetness which made his most intimate attendants and servants love him. “But, to tell the truth, I am worried sick.” Restlessly, he wandered back towards the window. “They are calling another meeting early to-morrow morning, when they will hold this ultimatum to my head, and I shall have to answer.”
The frightening urgency of the matter shook Isabel out of her self-pity. “But surely they could not stop our Coronation now — just a few hours before the procession starts? With the streets al
l decorated and packed with people, and the Bishop waiting in your Abbey?”
“That is where they are so clever. Forcing my hand at the last moment. Pembroke’s idea, probably. Although he is less pugnacious, he is cleverer than all the pack of them put together.”
Isabel’s whole heart cried soundlessly, “Oh, my love, send Piers Gaveston away, as they want. As I want. We could be so happy. Soon, without his brilliance always there blinding you, you might come to love me. Left alone, we like each other. You know we do. Except for your everlasting dogs and horses, we enjoy the same things.” But she hated the too true taunt of jealousy, and was trying to learn to leash her tongue. “What will you tell them to-morrow?” she asked soberly.
“That I will call a Parliament directly I am crowned. That I will abide by whatever Parliament decides — when the time comes.”
“You will really promise them that?”
It was as if all the fine hopes which had enraptured her during their wedding service had been given back to her. She scarcely noticed that Edward did not really answer. “I am sorry about all this, dear Isabel,” he repeated. “I do not forget that it is your Coronation too, and I had wanted it to be a happy day for you.”
She was quick to respond. She coaxed him back into her chair and perched on the arm of it, leaning, relaxed and sweet, against his shoulder. “I know I am often jealous. I was even jealous of my brothers sometimes at home because a girl always has to take a secondary sort of place,” she admitted, fondling his freshly-shaven cheek.
He took her marauding fingers and held them in his own. “I do not want my wife to take a secondary sort of place. But I do wish she could bring herself to like my friends a little,” he said, with a rueful laugh. “Life would be so much more entertaining for us all.”
“Indeed I will try,” she promised, feeling that it should be easy enough to like the rest of them once Gaveston was gone.
“Now that it may be too late,” sighed Edward.
“You seem to depend upon this Gaveston so much. Have you known him long?”
“Since I was fourteen. Although I had several friends of my own age it seems to me, when looking back, that I was always lonely until he came. You must know yourself, Isabel, how ‘set apart’ one always feels being ‘royalty’. The others never really treated me as one of themselves, although I longed to be treated so. But Piers always did.”
“But why were you lonely when you had good parents?” asked Isabel, thinking of her own united family.
“My father was always away campaigning, and my mother was so often with him that I scarcely remember her. He gave me a household of my own when I was far too young — only ten. To make a man of me, he said. Though probably it was because it left him free to attend to things which interested him more. In his mind — and in the minds of the people, no doubt — I was always that Prince offered to them almost from the day of my birth as the stalwart successor to carry on my father’s work. Edward of Caernarvon. Someone who would grow up with all his fine administrative ability and aptitude for war.” The less warlike Edward turned and smiled into her eyes with a self-deprecating appeal for understanding. He seemed to have forgotten that he looked upon her as a child whenever it suited him. “You know, Isabel, it is not easy to be a hero’s son.”
“I can imagine that it is not, although so many thoughtlessly envy you.” She took his hand and held it comfortingly in her lap. “But it was natural, was it not, that your parents should be ambitious for you? After all, when we have a son you would want him to be a trained soldier and ruler, would you not?”
“I hope to God he will be! If only for his own sake.”
Isabel was both surprised and pleased by the vehemence of his reply. Her proud upbringing had been such that she could not picture any son of hers preferring to idle away his time. “And did Piers come to live in your household when you were fourteen?” she prompted.
“Yes. He was a year or two older than I. The other fellows made fun of him at first because, coming from our possessions overseas, he seemed to them like a foreigner, and was poor. His father had lost almost everything in my father’s wars. Poor Piers did not even have a tutor like the rest of us. Only a devoted oddity of a servant called Dragon.”
“What an apt and lovely name!” laughed Isabel.
“If it really was his name. Piers may have invented it. He invented so many pleasant things. Life suddenly became gay and took on new meaning after he came. I — grew to love him.”
“And the others?”
“Oh, they did not sneer at him for long. He always took it in good part up to a certain point. And then he would hit them — just once, and hard.” Edward stretched his long legs before him and laughed pleasurably at the recollection. “After that they left him alone. They found it was pleasanter to join in the entertainments he created than to sulk alone. Jealous as they were, he never bore them ill-will, and it made it easier that he and I were usually winners at the quintain or first home in the hunting field. And then, of course, young Gilbert, my sister’s son, always imitated him in everything.”
“The sister who was born in the middle of a Crusade?”
“Yes, Joanna of Acre. And Gilbert’s infatuation was another thing which irritated my father. When he came home to Westminster after his massacre of Berwick he had time on his hands for once. Time to poke into the expenses of my household, to find out that I was not made in his mould. He sent Piers away to his family estates in Guienne. Said he had a bad influence over me. So I know what life will be like if he is forced to go again.”
Although everything that he had told her had puzzled or hurt her, Isabel was glad that he had confided in her. It must surely bring them nearer together, she thought. The unhappiness he was so obviously enduring brought out that maternal element in her which had prompted her to ease his strange embarrassment with frivolous conversation on their wedding night, and her wish to comfort him brought with it a sense of union which went beyond the warmth of passion. Sitting there within the shelter of her husband’s arm and with her lovely Coronation clothes spread before them Isabel hoped that the worst of her troubles were over, and began to feel a little ashamed of having complained to her father. After all, she had thoroughly enjoyed the journey from Dover with the people in each town turning out to cheer them and Edward explaining so knowledgeably about the heaths and farmsteads, and watermills, and how the quaint little strips of land were divided between master and peasants at each manor they came to. Their short stay at Eltham Palace had been pleasant too, and that, she had to admit, had been largely due to Gaveston’s entertainments. And to-morrow, after so much preparation, promised to be yet another wonderful day. Once more she would be the centre of attraction in a becoming dress and jewels. Riding through London she would taste again that sweet, heady draught of public admiration. Admiration which, each day in private, she read more clearly in Robert Le Messager’s dark eyes, and which had helped to revive her self-esteem in moments of depression. But now that Gaveston was going, sorry as she was for Edward, she would not be depressed any more. Once she could get out of this grim old place she would strive to make their marriage all important to him. She would unpack her lovely French furnishings and arrange some masques and music herself. “I am glad we do not have to spend more than one night here,” she said, looking round with distaste at the untapestried stone walls. “I am sure it is damp. And that there are ghosts.”
“I know. But it is one of our foolish hidebound traditions that all sovereigns of this country must lie here the night before they are crowned.”
“Well, at least let us retire early and lie in comfort,” laughed Isabel. “For without a doubt we shall both have to be up early in the morning. And do not, I beg of you, Edward, leave me long alone for your Tower of London makes my flesh creep.”
Edward withdrew his arm from her and sat hunched forward, with hands clasped between his knees. “It is the weight of all the unhappiness that has gone on here,” he said. “Ever sinc
e Norman William built it countless men have lain here condemned to die. When I was brought here as a boy to see the lions down by the gates, I scarcely enjoyed them for thinking of all the prisoners who had languished here through the ages. I used to dream about it sometimes and wake my nurse with my screaming. I wondered how men bore it. Sometimes, when I was alone, I could almost put myself in their place, hearing the clang of a dungeon door which would shut out the sunshine for ever, and being dragged out to be killed or left to rot.”
Isabel shivered and clutched at his arm. “Stop, Edward!” she beseeched. “You are staring before you as if you could see — and feel — it all. You have far too vivid an imagination. It is not for you to pity every poor caitiff in your realm. You are their king. At least it could never happen to you.”
“No, I suppose not,” agreed Edward, shaking himself out of his morbid imaginings with a half-shamed laugh. “Let us talk of something more cheerful until supper time. Our homecoming, for instance. I think you will like living at Westminster.”
“Is that old, too?”
“Parts of it. But the part of the palace where we shall live was burned down and I have had it rebuilt. Ready for my bride.”
Isabel felt that she was seeing a surprising and lovable side of him at which she had never guessed. And that this coming to understand each other was, perhaps, one of the most rewarding things about marriage. But to-morrow he would look far removed from any common husband, in his crown and purple velvet. And that was a subject they were bound to come back to at the moment.
“Now call your women and let me see you in this marvellous dress the Queen of Navarre had made for you,” he urged. “Even in this dark room it shines, so it should be breathtaking among all the lighted candles in the Abbey. I am sure it will outshine all of us.”
But to her intense mortification Isabel did not outshine everybody. And neither did Edward. The Earl of Cornwall, who had spoken as if he would have little time to think about his own choice of clothes, appeared in purple velvet, too, and decked in jewels which rivalled his royal master’s. Being taller and stronger, he seemed to over-shadow even the handsome Plantagenet. And if the men in the crowd were openly admiring Isabel, most of the women spent more time gazing at Gaveston than at her glittering gown. And many, even while they resented every breath the Gascon drew, could not refrain from staring at such amazing and impervious insolence.
Isabel the Fair Page 4