Isabel the Fair

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  Only the sound of a charred piece of log falling with a soft little plop on to the hearth followed the warm melody of his voice. With her vivid imagination, Isabel had followed him into a happier, younger world. “She was your mother?” she said softly, hoping that one day some unborn son of hers would think of her like that.

  “Yes.” Gaveston’s fingers were stilled on the table, his eyes stared into the red heart of the fire. “They burned her as a witch in Guienne.”

  “Perot!” For the first and only time the pet name passed her lips, her hand leaped forth impetuously to one of his.

  “My father was not there to save her. He had offered himself as one of Edward the First’s hostages to the French.”

  “And you — ”

  “Dragon told our servants to keep me away, but I struck at them with my ridiculous little dagger and ran after him into the market-place. He would have dragged her from the faggots if the French soldiers had not pulled him back. He will always bear the scars of it.”

  “And you — as a child of seven — saw it happen?”

  “And was terrified by the stench of her dear, scorching flesh.” Gaveston’s words came slowly, as though dragged up from an old deep well of suffering. “When the person who is the centre of one’s world is burned to death it is not something which happens, and then is finished. It is something which is always there, embodied in the element itself — something which one sees in every proud beacon fire, on every homely hearth. The consuming flames lick on through the years, devouring one’s heart.”

  The two of them sat in silence. They might have been alone in all that great castle.

  Isabel rose and stretched her white arms above her head in a gesture of weary exasperation. “How much longer must we stay in this bare and horrible place?” she demanded, exchanging her subtler grievances for the material.

  “Not long, I imagine, once Lancaster gets wind of where we are,” said Gaveston, stooping to gather up again the cloak that slid from her shoulders.

  “Could we withstand a siege any better here than at Newcastle?”

  “Rather worse,” he answered sombrely. “I could, of course, take what few men we have and go out and fight.”

  “And Edward?”

  He looked at her without shame or subterfuge. “I do not think he will choose that way. And after all, he is the King.

  He has already risked so much for me. I could not persuade him to any course which would endanger his life.”

  They both turned sharply at the sound of footsteps descending the tower stairs. Edward appeared in the doorway, his face pale and his hair ruffled by the wind on the battlements. “That rumour the shire reeve had yesterday is true,” he told them breathlessly. “Newcastle must have fallen to Lancaster’s men a day or two after we left.”

  “We got away only just in time,” murmured Isabel, but Edward and Gaveston went on talking quickly without noticing her.

  “But now they are on their way here. A fully equipped army against a garrison already depleted by the Scots and riddled with sickness.”

  “How far off does this messenger say they are?” asked Gaveston.

  “Close behind him. A dozen miles, perhaps. He must have ridden like the wind. His poor sweating beast almost dropped under him.”

  “They would attack from the land gate.”

  “What does it matter where they attack from?” asked Edward. “Constable and Captain both say we cannot possibly hold out for more than a couple of days.”

  “It is only I whom they want. I could give myself up,” suggested Gaveston.

  “No. I forbid it, Piers. There is still Scarborough. One of my strongest castles. The Percys have lived there so you may be sure it is kept in good fettle, and I will make you Constable, mon cher. It is only about seventy miles.”

  “It wouldn’t matter if it were only twenty, with all our best horses left behind at Newcastle! I suppose it was unavoidable hurrying away down the river like that, but what would I give for my fleet roan now! But there is no need for you to come, Ned,” protested Gaveston. “You can stay here and make your peace with them. Tell them I slipped away without your knowing to France.”

  Edward went close to him and clapped a hand on each of his shoulders. “It is no good, Perot,” he said. “I will not leave you until I see you safely established in Scarborough. With your sound military sense you would stand some sort of chance there.”

  Isabel felt shut out and unprotected. “How soon do we start?” she asked, rising shakily from her chair.

  By the way that the King swung round at the sound of her voice she knew that he had completely forgotten her. He stood frowning for a minute or two, as though confronted with a fresh problem. “It is a stormy night and you will be safer here,” he pointed out. “Beaumont will look after you. I will leave orders that the gates are to be opened without an arrow being exchanged. After all, Lancaster is your devoted kinsman.”

  Isabel scarcely heard his words. The bare sense of them struck her too cruelly. Her hand still gripped the carved arm of her vacated chair for support. “Before God, Edward, you do not mean to leave me behind?” she cried, her voice croaking with fear.

  In his own anxiety, Edward shook aside her pleading hand with unaccustomed roughness. “The fellow said it was Lancaster’s men. And what speed could Piers and I make with three women and their gear?”

  Isabel faced him angrily. “You mean it is your friend’s safety against your wife’s,” she accused.

  “There would be far more question of your safety out in an open boat with this storm rising,” Edward flung back at her sullenly. “Are any of the barons likely to harm you? Have they not turned my whole country against me by making a crusade of your wrongs? Are you not the apple of Lancaster’s eye?”

  “But I tell you we cannot be sure who is on the march against us. And you admit this place is obsolete and ill-manned. If my father knew that you — ”

  “I have taken enough orders from your father. And now I order you to stay.”

  He was the King, angry and aloof. No longer her gentle, compliant husband. Desolation gripped her. She went down on her knees to him on the cold stone, seizing his resisting hand and holding it against her cheek. Her tears flowed over it. “I entreat you, Edward, do not leave me. You cannot leave me now! I am three months gone with child.”

  His hand no longer pulled away from her. She felt him stiffen with surprise. “Isabel!” he exclaimed, tom between pity, surprise and incredulity.

  “Isabel, you swear that this is true — about our child?”

  “On all the vows I made on that most lovely day I married you.”

  He was unhesitant and kind again, as though he had suddenly made up his mind. “Then go now and have them pack your things. You have a good half hour. Come down and wait here until we come for you. You would get wet outside.”

  Isabel kissed his hand and obeyed. She wasted no words but went swiftly up the tower stair. Her limbs still shook, her face was white and smudged with undried tears; but her husband had not deserted her. Sickness and storm, battle and siege might lie ahead, but she would not be left behind in this grim place where she knew no one and where men spoke a dour Northumbrian tongue. She slammed the door of her candlelit room and found her two women preparing her bed. In quick, staccato words she told them what had happened, what they must do, and why.

  The bobbing light of a lantern drew her attention to a man moving on the steps below. It must be Dragon, making ready their boat. “Heaven save us, how small it looks to take six of us!” she thought. She saw Dragon deposit a bundle of some sort in the stem sheets and could just discern two other figures emerging from the postern door. To Isabel, peering down the sheer surface of the wall, they looked foreshortened but familiar. “Hurry! Hurry!” she cried over her shoulder. “The King and milord Gaveston are already down by the river, although not half the time his Grace gave us has gone by.”

  But the two foreshortened figures stepped without hesitatio
n into the swaying boat. A rope splashed into the water and Dragon, already kneeling in the bows, pushed off. Swiftly and silently the King and Gaveston set oars in the row-locks and rowed out across the river towards the nearest lighted ship.

  “Bringnette! Ghislaine!” cried Isabel, half-crazed with horror. Edward had meant to do this. He had tricked her. The cup fell from her outstretched hand, tinkling against the outer wall and falling with a faint splash into the water. It must have caught Edward’s attention. Sitting amidships, he looked up, his face a moving disc of whiteness as he rowed. She knew that he must have seen her outlined against the lighted room, heard her cry out to him to wait. But he made no sign, only rowed steadily on with long, powerful strokes, setting the pace for Gaveston in the bows. Piers Gaveston, his beloved friend, who must be put safely in the stronghold of Scarborough at all costs.

  Her two women, their arms laden with treasured possessions and with garments trailing from their hands, peered over her shoulders, too shocked to say a word. It was left to her to comment on their desolate situation.

  Anger surged through her, crushing out misery and fear. Her slight pregnant body shook and like a she-wolf’s, her lips were drawn back viciously from the strong whiteness of her teeth. “I will kill him for this!” she vowed, her gaze fixed on the pale receding blur of her husband’s face.

  Chapter Eleven

  During the desolate weeks which she spent in Tynemouth castle Isabel assumed a new, pathetic young dignity beneath which to cloak her hurt pride. For once reticence curbed her natural impetuosity. She no longer discussed unguardedly with Bringnette and Ghislaine. She was very conscious of the indigant sympathy with which even the roughest castle servant sprang to serve her, and because their pity hurt she walked among them proudly, never letting them forget not only that she was their Queen but also that she came from the royal house of a more civilized country where women were not abandoned, with neither comfort nor entertainment, in bare fortresses.

  The thought of bearing a child in such circumstances appalled her. Glad as she was that she might at last produce an heir, she was too full of resentment to share Ghislaine’s store of excited loving to be lavished on the baby for its own sake. While realising that she had much excuse, Isabel tried to salve her conscience for this lack of maternal feeling by showing concern for the sick and poor in the town, and by taking charge of a small Scots boy whom she had seen singing for scraps at the castle gates. His parents had been killed in some border foray, and besides having him clothed and fed she was only too thankful to pass some of the time which hung so heavily by allowing him to sing his sad, incomprehensible Gaelic songs in hall.

  “The King has left Scarborough and is in York again raising another army for milord Gaveston’s defence. As soon as he has time he will come for us,” said Isabel one evening after supper. She spoke with more pride than confidence.

  The Constable of the castle, who had been talking apart with his captain by the half-cleared supper-table, came forward and bowed to her. “Madam, forgive me, but it is meet you should know there is no longer need of an army for Scarborough.”

  Isabel’s hands were stilled on the strings. “You have news, Sowerby?”

  “The Earl of Cornwall has surrendered. It seems that he had little chance to do otherwise. The place was not sufficiently victualled, nor so strongly garrisoned as he and the King had supposed. And once the King had left the town the Earl of Lancaster sent milords Pembroke, de Warenne and Percy to besiege it, and most of the northerners flocked to join them.”

  “Instead of joining their lawful King.”

  Sowerby accepted the hauteur of her tone with respectfully bent head; but he was a Yorkshireman, sturdy and blunt. “Like the rest of us, they had heard how the two of them abandoned your Grace,” he said.

  “To obey the Earl of Lancaster instead of their King is treason,” Isabel insisted, but her heart sang with a glad sense of power because they had risen to protect her.

  “What will they do with Piers Gaveston, Sir Constable?” asked Ghislaine anxiously.

  “They will certainly bring him to trial for all the dissension he has caused, Mademoiselle du Bois. But he surrendered only on the condition that his life should be spared and that he should be taken to speak with the King first. And the King himself sent an urgent message to milord Pembroke promising to agree to any terms they may make if only he will see that no harm comes to his friend.”

  “And you think they will do this?” asked Isabel, wondering how much the barons thought Edward’s promises were worth and how they could not see that he was only playing for time.

  “It seems so, Madam. Milord Pembroke has managed to persuade the more violent among them, and has pledged his estates to the King and his word to Gaveston that he will bring him safely home to Wallingford. They are marching southward now, and the King, they say, is on his way southward too, so that a meeting may be arranged at Windsor.”

  To be left like a chatelaine of no particular importance in such a backwater of a place while events were going on which concerned her husband and his kingdom so closely was more than Isabel’s proud spirit could bear. So great was her longing to be back at Westminster or Windsor that she would have set forth herself with her meagre handful of followers had not the Constable warned her of the dangers which were likely to befall a party of women travelling during such disturbed times, and reminded her that he himself would be held responsible to both England and France for keeping her safely in his castle.

  One morning just before midday a well-equipped body of horsemen appeared at the gates, and before the excitement of their arrival had died down Aymer de Valence of Pembroke himself was waiting upon her; but a very different de Valence from the dignified, composed statesman whom she had last seen at her husband’s court. He looked more lined and sallow than ever, and appeared to be extraordinarily agitated.

  “You are more than welcome, milord,” said Isabel, greeting him with unfeigned pleasure. “We had heard that you were conducting the Earl of Cornwall to Wallingford but, as usual, rumour appears to be a lying jade.”

  The tall, thin earl bent over her hand so low that she guessed he had come to beg a favour. “He was in my charge, but was stolen from me,” he said, with none of his usual euphemism.

  “Stolen from you?” repeated Isabel.

  “I was fool enough to leave him for a day or two at Deddington, a small village near Oxford. Your Grace may recall that my manor of Bramthorp is near there, and with all these disturbances it was months since I had seen my wife. Besides which, the Gascon was badly chafed because some of those hot-heads had insisted upon his riding in chains. God knows I have no cause to show mercy to a man who has gone about calling me a play-acting buffoon, but he was the King’s friend, and I am not, I hope, completely inhuman. So I left him in the house of the village priest, adequately guarded, while I went home to spend a night with my wife. I told him to rest — ”

  “Why are you telling me all this?” said Isabel, puzzled by the note of apology in his usually suave voice.

  “There are some evil-minded persons who are putting it about that I, who had given my solemn word to escort Gaveston safely, pre-arranged all this with Warwick.”

  “With Warwick? What had Guy Beauchamp of Warwick to do with it?”

  “In the early hours of a Sunday morning it was. The priest had gone to celebrate Mass in another village. Guy surrounded the sleepy little rectory and shouted to the Gascon to come out just as he was, bare-foot from his bed. He clamped the chains on him again and took him off to some foul dungeon in Warwick Castle.”

  Isabel rose from her chair, half choked by the quick beating of her heart. She was aware of the silk banner Ghislaine had been embroidering slipping with a slithering hiss to the floor, and of Bringnette’s sharp grunt of satisfaction. She was aware, too, most vividly, of the way Piers Gaveston had looked only a few weeks ago, when he had last talked with her in this hall. She was back under the spell of those few moments when
she had come inadvertently upon the real man, glimpsing the tender beauty of his initial human relationship and realising what life had made of him. She knew that she should be rejoicing because her enemy had been trapped and taken, and was badly shaken at finding herself instinctively on the captive’s side; but not for worlds would she have admitted it, after all her months of bitter complaining. “Warwick would show him no mercy,” she said with apparent indifference. “He swore that one day Piers should feel the bite of the Black Dog he had baited.”

  “He has already bitten, most savagely,” said Pembroke. “He held a trial of sorts, with few of the rest of us present. They brought up all Gascon’s crimes, real and imaginary, and some unimportant squireen said, ‘We have followed our prey for a long time, and should not now let him go. It behooves us to consider the annoyance and expense he has been to the State, and to decide that it is better for this one man to die than that civil war should spread because of him.’ So they condemned him to death as a traitor — as a traitor against the King, mark you!” Pembroke’s strained voice broke into an angrily contemptuous laugh.

  “And what then?” prompted Isabel, out of the shocked ensuing stillness.

  “Warwick had him taken out onto a lonely hill beyond the city wall. Blacklowe, I think it is called. Although Gaveston stood there chained and helpless, it seems that even those who had shouted after him and mocked him by blowing on their hunting horns seemed afraid to touch him — either because he was the King’s friend or because he exercised some peculiar power over them. Until a Welshman who knew nothing of the business came along and for a few pence stabbed him, and brutally severed his head with a borrowed sword.”

  Ghislaine stifled a scream and Isabel, standing with her back to the rest of them by an open window, felt the babe jerk in her womb. The warm June sunshine flooded all about her as it must have warmed the world on Blacklowe Hill that earlier noontide, and mocked the young man who stood there, loving life. But it was not for her to be pitiful. Had she not always said she hated him? Had she not had cause? More intimate cause than all the harsh barons put together.