Isabel the Fair

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  But it was more than hasty rising which had chilled her. It was fear. The same stark sudden fear which drew lamentations from her women and made their pale hands shake uselessly. Fear of the Black Douglas with hordes of barbaric kilted Scotsmen pouring down over the border to slaughter, burn and rape. But she would not admit it. She sat regally in her state chair all through that dismal summer morning listening to the defeat of England’s pride. Other messengers from the broken army came and went before her, sodden and befouled with mud and blood, and each filled in some further details of that devastating rout. And all the time the rain beat down steadily outside the windows. The steady, merciless rain.

  “It was at a place called Bannockburn,” they told her. “A brook runs through it below the mound of Stirling castle, and now the brook runs blood.”

  “We were trying to relieve the castle. Sir Philip Mowbray and his poor devils there had had no food for days,” said Thomas of Norfolk. He had come in quietly and was standing behind the Queen’s chair. Hearing his voice, she put up a hand to touch him, immeasurably thankful for Marguerite’s sake that he was back. “Lord Clifford took eight hundred of our cavalry — all picked men — and tried to push through from the eastern side. He made a furious charge and at one time things looked black for the defending Scots, but the next thing we saw was English horses galloping off in all directions, mostly with empty saddles.”

  “And where was milord the King?” asked Isabel, trying to piece together each man’s particular aspect of the battle into one comprehensible whole.

  “His tent was pitched on a little hillock behind our main divisions,” said his half-brother, Norfolk. “He rose at dawn and joined us. Everything was very quiet, only the birds singing sleepily. We looked across to the enemy’s lines and saw men going down on their knees. ‘The rebels have seen the size of our army and are praying for forgiveness!’ he cried out, hoping that all bloodshed could be averted. Then we realized that an Abbot of some sort was walking among them, and Aymer de Valence said in that dry way of his, ‘Yes, they are praying for forgiveness, but from God, not us’.”

  “The King gave the order for action then an’ we let fly,” broke in a brawny Sussex bowman. “The air was full of arrows and the Scots falling like ninepins. But the Bruce sent the pick of his cavalry chargin’ right through the thick of it. ’Twas a turbel risk to take, but once the lucky ones as was left alive come to close quarters we was done. We’d no weapons save our bows, an’ their gurt horses trampled most o’ my comrades. The Earl of Pembroke saw our plight an’ was quick to send a fine bunch of cavalry to help us. They come thunderin’ across the flat ground by the bum, an’ the young Earl o’ Gloucester — God rest his soul! — was leadin’ ’em. An’ then I dunno how ’twas but the whole pack of ’em seemed to be sinkin’ down in the earth like the Devil was pullin’ at ’em.”

  “You see, Madam, it is as I said,” interrupted Richard Overbury, glad of corroboration.

  “With our bowmen gone and half our knights bogged down by pits and caltrops what could we do?” asked a shamed and shaken old knight.

  They seemed almost to have forgotten their silent, whitefaced Queen. Absorbed in their subject, they began reliving that dreadful day among themselves.

  “But the thing that really finished us was when the King’s party looked up and saw a second army of Scots coming over the brow of the hill behind the first. Though some do say it was only the baggage men who’d heard the day was won and were coming after the loot — ”

  The Queen cared little why the English had taken this unexpected defeat. All that mattered was that they had. She made an impatient gesture to her steward to send them all away to fight their battle over again elsewhere. She sent everyone away. Even Bringnette and Ghislaine. But she gestured to Thomas of Norfolk to stay. “Tell me what happened to Edward and tell me the truth,” she ordered, as soon as they were alone. And rising from her chair she moved to the window embrasure, her silken skirts swishing over the scented straw as she went.

  “He left the field,” the unhappy youth repeated.

  “You mean he fled?”

  He made no answer until she turned, and then he spread his hands deprecatingly and bowed his head. He would not look at her. “One of the first.”

  “Alone?”

  “Sir Giles de Argentine went with him.”

  “Yet you tell me that his Grace is safe. And I heard the others say just now that Sir Giles died, fighting furiously.” Somehow she must drag the truth from him. He might be Edward’s half-brother and hate to tell her, but she was Edward’s wife. If she had to live with him, she must know.

  “Answer me!” she ordered, and her eyes were two probing points of brightness.

  “Sir Giles told me to escort the King to Stirling castle. But he himself went back.”

  “Why?”

  “As soon as we were safely out of the press he begged Edward to excuse him. He said it was not his custom to run away.”

  “He said that to the King?”

  “Yes, Madam. He said that in his family the men stayed and fought. Then he set spurs to his horse and galloped back to the battlefield. As we rode towards Stirling I could still hear him a long way off shouting his war cry ‘de Argentine! de Argentine!’ Then suddenly I didn’t hear it any more — nor the thud of his horse’s flying hoofs. I suppose that was when he was killed.”

  Isabel’s skirts swished after her like angry snakes as she mounted the few stone steps to the window. She stood with her back to the room, covering her face with both hands. Ever since the time of Coeur de Lion the courage of the Plantagenets had been legendary. She had been proud to marry a Plantagenet. But in that bitter moment Edward, as a man, ceased to exist. And in the grip of her shame she thought involuntarily of Roger Mortimer, the fierce border lord, and set him up as a symbol of the only kind of man she wanted.

  She had almost forgotten her waiting relative who was telling her how he and the King had ridden on to Dunbar, not daring to stop even for food because the Douglas was so hot on their heels. “A mercy Edward is so splendid a horseman,” he was saying.

  Isabel supposed that he was too obtuse to see that the fact added shame to shame. “And at Dunbar?” she asked wearily.

  “Patrick, Earl of the Northern Marches, found us a fishing boat. Some other stragglers, mostly older men, had joined us by then. So I begged a fresh horse and rode down through Berwick.” Once again Thomas offered doubtful comfort. “It was a calm summer night when they embarked

  so the King should make some English port quite safely.”

  “Quite safely!” echoed Isabel, making a savage little gesture of dismissal. After he had gone she stood for a long time by the window staring out into the gathering twilight. The rain still fell with desolate monotony down into the courtyard. All her life she would hate the depressing sound of steady rain.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The army straggled home, and Edward’s little ship came safely to port in England. There were no bonfires on the hills nor was there any cheering in the London streets. “Twenty thousand they were against six thousand,” men kept muttering in a bewilderment of unbelief; and by the time the survivors of the twenty thousand had been paid there seemed to be no money left in the exchequer. And less and less food in the country, so that people went about dazed by anxiety and hunger. “Food is only for the rich,” the fathers of young families said, but even at the King’s table there were few luxuries. Acting on Pembroke’s advice, he tried to keep his poorer subjects from starvation by fixing the prices of staple foods, but even with the money in their hands shopkeepers waited in vain for farmers’ carts to bring the daily provisions into London. Slaughter yards stood empty and shrill-voiced ’prentice lads had few wares to call. Herds found so little fodder that there was scarcely enough milk for country children. Even the oak trees, no matter how violently shaken by anxious swineherds, seemed to let fall no acorns for the pigs. And now, with the new year, the Scots were over the border pillaging t
he precious crops in the North. There seemed nothing for it but to gather together another army and march northwards to oppose them.

  “But how raise another army without money?” sighed Edward.

  “Why are we so poor?” asked Isabel, who had never wanted for anything in her life until she came to England.

  “Because of my father’s unending wars,” he had told her, with some truth.

  “Or because of your extravagance? And Gaveston’s?” Seeing the sharp look on her face, and the sudden whiteness of Edward’s, Aymer de Valence had, as usual, hastened to intervene in the cause of conjugal peace. “If only your father had not expelled the Jews, Sir!”

  Isabel had looked up at him quickly — seeing his dark little beard and his clever, sallow face, and remembering how Piers Gaveston had always baited him by calling him “the Jew”, she wondered for a moment if he had any cause for racial feeling. “Did he persecute them?” she asked, her interest suddenly sidetracked, as he had intended.

  He had smiled then as if reading her thoughts. “No. Edward Longshanks was always just. When he ordered them to leave the country he gave them reasonable time, and forbade his officers to ill-use them. But all the same it was one of the few serious mistakes that great king ever made.”

  “Why?” Isabel remembered asking. And the answer had been succinct. “Because there is now no one to borrow from. Centuries ago, when the Jews were persecuted out of their pastures, their flair for finance grew. Now we have no moneylenders, and no way of raising money save the false economy of a debased coinage.”

  That had been months ago. And now, after a Christmas spent at Westminster, Edward had gone north again and Isabel was glad enough to be left at Eltham, quietly out of it all. There had been no question of her going with him, because she had been again with child, and now she had just borne him a second son. He had been delighted with the news and had quite characteristically made her messenger a present of a hundred pounds without any thought for their financial difficulties. “Will he never learn?” she had thought and, although still abed, had set about making arrangements for a quiet christening, sending only for her uncle of Lancaster and the Bishop of Norwich as godparents, and calling the child by the thoroughly English name of John, which she knew would please both her husband and the people.

  The birth had been easy, but now that all the fuss and effort were over, post-natal lassitude lulled her to a contentment foreign to her restless nature, so that she was glad to sit idly with Marguerite in the warm September sunshine. It was really very pleasant in the Kentish palace garden with its parterre of small, square flower-beds intersected by stone-flagged paths. From where she sat in the shade of a mulberry tree she could see four-year-old Ned playing with the wooden hobby-horse which his father had lovingly carved for him and which the boy called Cher Ami. Somewhere in the background Thomeline was singing softly to his lute. Thomas of Lancaster had come to enquire after her health, laden with gifts for herself and for his new godson. In his lordly way he had also been distributing money to all who had cared for her during her confinement and now most of her women had withdrawn to the herb garden, babbling with delight.

  “What a satisfactory Queen you make, my dear Isabel, producing sons,” he was saying. “You will be more popular in this country than ever.”

  “I doubt if John will be as strong as Ned,” said Marguerite anxiously. And her glance strayed admiringly to the sturdy boy urging his brightly-painted Cher Ami across the grass.

  “All the same it might be a popular move to show him to the people, after so quiet a christening. A procession through London, perhaps, with our dear Isabel holding him in her arms.”

  Thomas of Lancaster was always thinking of moves to enhance his own and his niece’s popularity. They did Edward no good, she knew. All the same, a little shiver of anticipatory pleasure ran through her at the thought of being seen in London again. It seemed a long time since she had heard the gasps of admiration and the wild cheering of the people, and this time, with the King away, all the tumultuous welcome would be for herself and her two children. Ned, perhaps, being led on a white pony, “We need to have the charettes done up, and all the cushions recovered,” she said. “Flame-coloured silk, I thought, and I would wear my silver lame. You, my dear Marguerite, look your loveliest in that myrtle green — ”

  But even as they fell to discussing it Hawtayne, her steward, came through the archway into the walled garden bringing a letter.

  “It is from the King, Madam,” he said. And they all fell silent while she broke theroyal seal and unrolled it. “He is near York, and wants me to join him,” she told them in a flat expressionless voice. A year ago, before Bannockburn, she would have been glad. Now she let the stiff parchment roll back across her lap and looked up at her two French relatives appealingly. “It is so pleasant here in late summer. Must I go up north?”

  Marguerite smiled at her sadly. She knew that the beauty of the season had less to do with Isabel’s reluctance than the new value one puts on solitude when out of love. “If the King wishes it,” she said.

  “When does he want you to come?” asked Lancaster, from the stone bench where he sat resplendent in a high-collared, belted houppelande, a becoming fashion for older men which he had introduced from France.

  “He says as soon as I am stronger.” Isabel got up, stretching her arms above her head as she went to join him on the garden seat. She even lifted Ned experimentally, when he left his play and ran to her. “See, I am quite strong already, dear uncle. Why do men always think of me as frail?”

  “I should not disabuse them of the idea, if I were you,” advised her aunt. “There is nothing makes a man feel so beneficent as giving in to a helpless-looking woman who barely reaches his heart.”

  Both of them laughed, and Isabel helped herself from a dish of marchpane squares which Ghislaine had brought for the Duke’s refreshment, and popped one into her firstborn’s ever-ready mouth. It was an hour for gossiping in a warm garden, for smiling indulgently at the antics of a child, for making exciting plans for a procession or a pageant; but now Edward’s letter had spoiled it. And Lancaster sat there, suddenly resentful, inveigling against the dragging, ineffectual war which so spoiled their lives. “Why not come to reasonable terms with the Scots instead of wasting our lives and substance?” he grumbled. “For all their pillaging, the Bruce is a civilized man.”

  Isabel felt provoked by the innate pomposity behind his pleasant facade. “I notice that you did not risk your life, milord,” she could not refrain from saying. “Was it because you feel some sympathy with the Scots that you refused to go?”

  He did not answer directly. “I am no longer young. I sent as many retainers as my allegiance to the crown demands,” he reminded her self-righteously.

  “You sound as though you sent them unwilling. But surely you wish to protect your people and possessions in Lancashire?” said Marguerite.

  “So far the King of Scotland has not touched them.”

  “But even so, with Cumberland and Northumberland already being raided, surely you consider that England should put up some resistance?”

  “Resistance? With no virile leaders, and such as there are still half disaffected from the Crown? And your good husband, Isabel, marching to the sound of fiddles, they tell me. Such resistance as we show to-day is a mere farce! A joke in the streets of Stirling, where mere ’prentices swear to bring back the stolen stone he was crowned on!” The earl arose, a fine figure of a man growing to paunchiness, with the arms of Hereford, Lincoln, Lancaster and Derby blazoned on his houppelande and anger snapping from his eyes. “Do you know what King Robert of Scotland says? T fear the bones of the first Edward of England dead more than I fear his living son!’ And he swears by all the saints that it was more difficult to get a foot of land from the old king, than it will be to take a whole kingdom from this present popinjay.”

  The hot blood rushed to Isabel’s face. She sprung up and faced him. “How do you know that he said t
hat? Whom did he say it to?” she demanded.

  But her uncle looked shiftily away, preparing to depart. He realized that he had over-stepped even the intimacy of their mutual foreign relationship. “Robert Bruce will assuredly take Berwick unless Edward has the sense to come to terms,” he repeated evasively.

  Marguerite rose too, cold with anger that he should say so cruel a thing before the Queen. She knew him to be jealous of Edward, lustful of power for himself and scheming enough to link himself with his niece’s popularity to that end; but never before had she so clearly seen the evil genius he must have proved to their marriage, with his efforts to push them into separate opposing parties. “Your Grace seems very well acquainted with the King of Scotland’s mind,” she said, with a formality that wiped out all their former friendly ease.

  He saw the eyes of both women rest upon him with suspicion, and immediately bethought him of some council table at which he should, at that precise moment, be presiding. And as he went hurriedly out into the bailey to join his retainers the young Prince went bounding through the archway after him, trying to reach up to his brightly jewelled dagger. He preferred men, and was never one to hang about his mother.

  “How could he repeat such words in your presence!” exclaimed Marguerite, staring after him.

  “But they were true,” said Isabel. She strove to speak as though she did not care, but felt physically sick with shame. The bright marigolds and modest pansies were all a haze before her eyes, so that she wondered if, after all, she could be as strong again as she had thought herself. She sank down again on the bench, bowing her head on her arm against the back of it. “I sometimes wish I were a widow like you and Gaveston’s Margaret,” she said.