But Isabel was scarcely listening. She stopped by a laden quince tree, picking absently at its foliage, with the last of the evening sunlight all about her. For weeks she had wanted to talk seriously with this clever, worldly wise brother of hers. It was difficult to discuss one’s own husband. Yet there were so many things which puzzled her. At home there was only Marguerite, and Marguerite was tolerantly fond of him. Perhaps, without fondness, a man might see more clearly, more objectively … Edward came into sight again, gorgeous in purple and gold, at the end of a transverse path. The glances of both of them were upon him. Absently, her small bejewelled fingers tore a quince leaf to pieces and scattered it in a small green shower on the grass. “Charles.”
“Ma chere?”
“How can a man of such splendid physique be so — ”
“Weak?”
“I suppose so.”
Hearing the depth of her sigh, and knowing the proud fire of her nature, Charles Capet realized what even this confidential admission must have cost her. He kicked thoughtfully at a stone with his long tipped scarlet shoe, trying to answer her with honesty. “It is not an over-rare type. A man with all the outward graces who is incapable.”
“Oh, no! Neither incapable nor indolent, as people pretend!” Isabel swung round on him in eager defence. “You know how musical he is. He knows more about dogs and horses than his own grooms. I verily believe he could build and thatch a house as well as any of our craftsmen. He — he made me the loveliest wrought-iron candle sconces for my lying-in — ” Isabel began to realize how childish her words must sound, and her voice tailed off in face of her brother’s sardonic grin.
“My dear child, how would even so fine a list of accomplishments help me or either of my elder brothers to rule France? Do you not see why Edward takes pains to perfect himself in these manual tasks? It is often so with people who are — insufficient — for the demands of their own administrative calling. It soothes their sense of failure — to do something well.”
“You talk as if he were a fool!” she cried out angrily.
Charles shrugged tolerantly. “When a king infuriates his most powerful subjects and then allows them to chase him about in his own country, that could be the kindest view to take. And few of our royal houses are immune from cases of degeneracy. We have to inter-marry too much. Oh, my dear, do not stand there looking so aghast. I am not seriously suggesting that your handsome English husband is insane. Merely that he has unfortunate tendencies. Why, even though, with your interests at heart, I have good cause to dislike him, at times I find it extraordinarily difficult to do so. He can be such merry company. You must not take it all so sadly. Spend his money, and turn that fog-bound island of his into a scene of glittering revelry with your lighthearted zest for life. And next time he starts fondling some attractive young man you must retaliate and take a lover.”
“Next time?” Isabel stared at his blond, laughing face in horror. “No, Charles, I could never go through that again! And you do not understand. Piers Gaveston was someone whom he loved. Someone real whom he will grieve for all his life. Whom no one could replace — except perhaps our son.”
To a sophisticated young cynic like Charles her words were almost meaningless. “You may be right,” he granted lightly. “But unless you want civil war you had better persuade him to come to terms with the man’s murderers, who after all had vast provocation. You must remember that to the fortunately normal nothing is more hateful than abnormality, and if life in that barbarous country should become more uncomfortably complicated than you can bear, you must appeal to the Dauphin or to me.”
Chapter Thirteen
As the people crowded into Westminster Hall there were many who declared that the Queen’s influence was now almost as strong as the Gascon favourite’s had been. That ever since their return she had been trying to persuade the King to issue this general pardon to his rebellious barons, and that it was she whom the country had to thank for the prospect of a less brutally disturbed era. She was there inside the hall now, lovelier than ever in the new maturity of her motherhood, and the hearts of all the women went out to her, well aware of all the slights and trials she must have been through.
The ceremony in Westminster Hall was Isabel’s personal triumph. From beneath decorously lowered lashes she glanced sideways to admire her husband, grave and handsome beneath her golden canopy of state; then watched the long line of barons filing past, each mounting the shallow steps to the throne and kneeling before him in submission. This time it was not they but the King who called the tune; and he had made it a condition of his pardon that they should kneel humbly in the sight of their peers and of as many of the common people as could crowd within the doors. “And now he will forgive them for what was largely his own fault,” thought Isabel, with a cynicism caught from her brother Charles.
She was glad to step outside into the sunshine and to be received into the warmth of the people’s welcome. She paused with Edward on the threshold, smiling down at them, fully conscious of what an ideal royal pair they must look, and wondering how much Edward realized that the wildest of the cheering was for her. And now for a bewildering moment a sense of power gripped her, a surprised assurance that she, a woman, might rule successfully where Edward failed. A fleeting suspicion came to her that all those solemn oaths of submission given by the barons might, in a crisis, weigh less than the warm, united love of the people. It was a heady, revolutionary thought; but times were changing. It had been part of the first Edward’s policy, so her kinsman of Lancaster had explained to her, that the voice of the Commons should be heard and so help to curb the power of barons who might thwart him, and already the masters of trade were beginning to hold the purse strings of Parliament.
“Let us get some fresh air after all that solemnity,” Edward was saying, rousing her from such grave speculation and drawing her towards her peaceful riverside garden.
In spite of his frequent easy kindnesses Edward spoke with that dispassionate detachment which showed him to be so out of touch with other people’s hearts. Isabel sighed, and changed the subject. “You really intend to march on Scotland?”
“Not before spring because there would be no fodder for our horses.” There was one of those painful silences while each of them realized that he had unwittingly been quoting Gaveston’s words. “But nothing less will satisfy Pembroke and the rest. This firebrand Bruce is marching on Stirling, they tell me. He may well be at Berwick and over our border next.”
Never at any time had Edward’s heart been in any war, but now Isabel realized how dreary the prospect of this fresh campaign must look to him without Gaveston. “Do you want me to come with you?” she asked, smothering a twinge of involuntary contempt with conscious pity.
He turned to her at once with eager uncertainty. “You know how you hated Tyneside — ”
Again this lack of understanding rose like a barrier between them. It had not been the castle, but his betrayal, which had been unbearable. With all her fastidious love of luxury Isabel knew that remoteness and grim walls might but have added fervour to her ecstasy had she been cut off there with a husband who was her lover. “I could have been wildly happy even at Tyneside — ” she began passionately.
But he pulled her close and kissed her to silence. A flame of loveliness always made her more vivid when she was angry. For a moment or two she gave herself, pliant and receptive, to the pleasure of his embrace, wishing the discreetly following courtiers at the bottom of the Thames. His arms were strong, his clothes smelled deliciously of some not too feminine fragrance. But why, why could he not order her to come? Take her because she was his?
She freed herself and left the garden, walking almost unseeingly with down-bent head to her apartments. In spite of her husband’s newly found need of her, a sudden craving for a very different kind of man had assailed her of late. Horrified at the strength of her errant desire, she had often gone straight to her private oratory and flung herself down on her knees to pray for
seemly gratitude and wifely chastity. But now she only called sharply to her women to prepare her bath with the new lavender essence sent from Paris, and to lay out an even more becoming gown for the King’s midday banquet to which all his humbled and forgiven lords had been invited.
London was full of gaiety that winter and she entered into it with all her natural zest. There was ease from internal tension coupled with that uprising of general good will which brings out the best in a nation preparing for war.
And so it came about that just before Christmas when the two Queens had invited Edward and a few of his courtiers to admire a magnificent pearl-embroidered cope which they had been making for the Pope, Marguerite’s two sons burst into the room, still hot and dishevelled from the tiltyard. “The Black Dog of Warwick is dead! The Black Dog of Warwick is dead!” chanted young Edmund of Kent, prancing excitedly around the room as though still mounted on his pony, and making an imaginary thrust at stem old Lady Badlesmere’s embroidery frame.
“Death is no subject for rough jubilation,” reproved his mother, putting out a hand to stay him.
“The Black Dog was poisoned!” persisted the boy.
“Edmund is so gullible,” explained his elder brother Thomas, struggling to remove his helmet. “It is only what people are saying.”
Having freed himself at last from his tilting helmet and seeing that the King was present, Thomas of Norfolk was already looking sheepish and embarrassed. It was one thing to burst in upon the news-starved ladies with the latest wild scandal, and another to give tongue to it incautiously before the King. A possible implication of what he had just heard began to be apparent to him. “Milord of Lancaster’s man who brought the news saw that scar-faced servant of — that scar-faced Gascon servant — in the streets of Warwick,” he mumbled reluctantly.
Isabel remembered the cold hatred in Dragon’s eyes and the smile on Edward’s lips that day when Guy Beauchamp had been officially forgiven. Her hand flew to her breast to still her quickening heartbeats and she was grateful when Aymer de Valence moved in front of her, shielding her from the rest of the company, as he selected an unused pearl from her needlework box and held it aloft to examine it by the light from the window. “And why should our good friend Dragon not be in Warwick?” he was enquiring negligently.
Isabel was glad of their alliance, and Edward gathered time to assume an air of indifference. “He was probably on his way to the Welsh border,” he said.
His uncle of Lancaster looked at him long and searchingly. “Then may one enquire, my dear Edward, by what sixth sense you know that the man was making for the Welsh border?”
“Certainly, my dear uncle,” replied Edward blandly. “I had offered him a place in my own household, and so I believe did my niece, so it was only civil of him to send me word that he had decided to take service with Roger Mortimer instead.”
“Roger Mortimer!” exclaimed more than one voice. “When he might have been in the royal household!”
“Not surprising, is it, seeing that Mortimer was trained to arms in the late Earl of Cornwall’s household? My friend thought highly of his military prowess and as we all know Mortimer has since made himself felt in enforcing order.” As if to dismiss the subject Edward took a corner of the gorgeous cope from Ghislaine with appreciative fingers and signed to her to help him stretch it out again. “It really is an exquisite piece of work, my love,” he told his wife, “and it is to be hoped that his Holiness’s special blessing will rest upon you.”
Marguerite sent her sons in chastened mood to clean themselves up before dining and no one in the room alluded again that morning to the Earl of Warwick’s death. Only when Edward came to her that night did Isabel dare to question him.
He lifted her chin and kissed her. “Roger Mortimer is one of my fiercest border lords. He and his uncle, Mortimer of Chirk, own half Wales. If Dragon has done this thing he would certainly be safer with them than here from the vengeance of men who wear the Warwick badge of bear and staff. The Mortimers know how to hold what is their own. Or for that matter,” he added laughingly, “what they take.”
He drew the miniver from the slender whiteness of her body and carried her to her bed. The moonlight lay in bands across the rich tapestry of the coverlet, illuminating the bold fierce leopards couchant of his race. With eyes half closed it was easy enough to pretend that he was bold and fierce, too.
“Roger Mortimer,” murmured Isabel, even while lying in her husband’s arms. “I like the name; I like the sound of him.”
Chapter Fourteen
She saw him for the first time across a heath alive with armed men. She heard a trumpet sound and from the raised ground where she sat her palfrey she saw him ride up at the head of some Welsh soldiers who were to join the expedition against Scotland. She noted how the ranks of archers and pikemen and men-at-arms seemed to make way respectfully before him and how the more important knights pressed forward to meet him. The newcomer was less tall than Edward, who reviewed his troops beside her, and less resplendent than Gaveston, who was in his grave. He was not even particularly handsome. But there was an air of purposeful strength about him which pleased her.
The border lord bent over her hand with due formality. When he looked up she noticed that his eyes were grey, curiously flecked with brown, and was aware that they had already introduced themselves to each other with that first spontaneous smile.
Sharp words of command, jangle of harness and the sudden shrill neighing of horses filled the air, and the movement of multi-coloured banners wove a constantly shifting tapestry of brightness around them. Scraps of opinion from tried warriors and bits of the boasting of excited young men like Thomas of Norfolk assailed their ears.
More fanfares were being sounded and the troops were beginning to march. Last farewells were being said. Isabel waved to Gilbert of Gloucester and to Thomas of Norfolk and to Robert le Messager. Surely they at least must come back covered with glory. They were too enthusiastic and too young to die. She bade a more formal farewell to Pembroke, to Lord Clifford, to Sir Henry de Bohun of Hereford and other seasoned warriors, and allowed a dignified old knight, Sir Giles de Argentine, to kiss her hand. Because he had gone Crusading with Longshanks he was allowed pride of place at Edward’s side. “Look well to the safety of milord the King!” she charged him almost gaily, and he promised on his knightly honour that he would.
His last thought was for their child, who was still small and helpless. And Isabel, watching Marguerite bid farewell to her elder son, was glad that it would be many years before her own babe would be old enough to ride away into the unknown like that. With the other women, both Queens waved to their men as long as they could see them, and then sat silent in their saddles watching the rest of the army depart. When the trampled heath was almost empty of men and the sun was glinting on long, snakelike lines of spears in the distance, Isabel turned with a feeling of flat depression and found Roger Mortimer still beside her.
She looked at him appraisingly — at his broad shoulders, his firm, clean-shaven mouth and at the reddish hairs on the back of his bare, right hand. “I shall be at Westminster and you far away guarding the Welsh border when we hear news of them from Scotland,” she said.
“May it be good news!”
“Even so it may be years before we meet again.”
She did not know what drove the impulsive words to her lips, and was furious with herself when he smiled at her naive betrayal of how much he interested her. His lips parted over square white teeth in a way which she found too likeable for her peace of mind. “A pity,” he said, looking down audaciously into her eyes, “when like calls to like.”
Months later, in London it was pouring with rain and scarcely light when the news came — which was just as well, because few people saw the man who brought it. His horse was flecked with sweat and he looked gaunt as a ghost. The sleepy guard at Moorgate pulled back the great bolts and let him through without question when he showed the Clare badge on his stained surcoa
t and asked for the Queen.
He rode through the sleeping city to Westminster, and Isabel rose from her bed to receive him. Rain and sweat glistened on his lined face. Beneath the grime of travel she recognized him as a favourite squire of Gilbert’s. She had seen him riding out with the young men whom she had waved to that day on the heath, but he looked much older now. “Have you a message for me from the King?” she asked sharply, drawing her wrap about her.
The man shook his head, his lungs still working too hard for speech. “I served — the Earl of Gloucester,” he panted.
“I know you did, Richard Overbury. I will have his sister wakened and brought so that she, too, may hear your good news.”
But he stayed her order with a gesture of entreaty. “I pray your Grace — not yet!”
For the first time Isabel began to suspect that his news might not be wholly good. “And how fares your Earl?” she asked, motioning to a servant to take his sodden cloak and bring him wine.
“He was killed. Leading a charge of cavalry.”
Isabel closed her eyes and pictured young Gilbert, ruddy and vital, urging his horse into the thick of the fight, calling back encouragement to all those splendid knights who thundered after him. “Not Gilbert!” she murmured. “What cruel, improbable mischance that it had to be he!”
“It was no improbable mischance, madam. He was only one of thousands. It was wholesale slaughter. The Scots defeated us — utterly.”
For a moment or two the amazed silence in the room was broken only by the steady beat of rain on the deserted courtyard outside. The eastern sky was growing light, making the hastily lit torches look garish. “And what of milord the King?” asked Isabel in a small frightened voice.
“He is safe, Madam.”
Isabel rose, stunned but outwardly composed. “Fetch milords of Lancaster and Arundel who sent their men but so churlishly refused to go in person.” she ordered. “Tell all members of the Council who are left in London to come without delay. Ghislaine, you must break this sad news to poor widowed Margaret Plantagenet, who has now lost a brother. And go, one of you, and bring me my miniver cloak. Leaving my bed so hastily has made me cold.”
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