Isabel the Fair

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  In spite of all older loyalties, Isabel’s heart sang with secret pride. Here was a man who would vindicate his own rights and dispel her enemies. But Wales was so far away and she had to wait hungrily for further news. Mortimer might have joined up with Lancaster. Fearing the King’s retribution, she half hoped that he had. But the next she heard was that Edward had defeated and captured Lan-r caster at some place called Boroughbridge. The fact that for once he was marching at the head of his army had put heart into them, and the rumour that Lancaster had been in league with the Scots put an end to all the Earl’s former popularity.

  “It must be in Yorkshire because they have taken the earl to Pontefract Castle/’ said Isabel, consulting her husband’s precious map. “I never dreamed that Edward would so decisively defeat the poor man.”

  “Badlesmere was with him, but he escaped,” Goodwin Hawtayne told her.

  “And he the cause of all the trouble,” sighed Bringnette.

  And a day or so later Ghislaine came into her mistress’s presence with a crumpled letter in her hand and tears in her eyes. “Oh, Madam, Robert has sent me this — from Yorkshire.”

  “And what does he say, beyond that he loves you? Anything of real import?” Isabel spoke unkindly, being herself extremely anxious, and hurt, because she, the Queen, had had no word from Edward.

  Honey-haired Ghislaine knelt on the cushion beside her, her first love letter, too precious for other eyes, crumpled against her breast. “Oh, yes, Madam. That is why I came to tell your Grace. He says that milord of Lancaster was brought from Boroughbridge to Pontefract with about a hundred of his followers. He was made to ride on a shambling white pony many hands too small for him — to make him look ridiculous — so that the people jeered. And that when he was brought to trial he kept saying ‘May my God have mercy on me, for my King will have none!”’

  “Brought to trial? My uncle, a Plantagenet — as much grandson of your third Henry as the King himself! To trial for what?”

  “Treason, Madam,” explained Hawtayne, seeing that the frightened, weeping girl could not speak. “It is now proven that he entered into negotiations with the Scots, hoping to gain power against the King’s party and the Despensers. That he accepted forty thousand pounds to betray your Grace and milord the Prince as hostages on condition that neither of you was hurt.”

  Isabel rose, one jewelled hand at her throat. “But the penalty for treason is — death. Oh, Bringnette, Ghislaine — when the King rode from Leeds to intimidate those barons with a show of such splendid force I never thought it would end like this. I thought that my uncle would see reason. I pictured them both coming back together. I thought we should all be friends again. But I see now — ”

  She saw now that it was as it had been when Gaveston was in danger. That although the King’s first eager spate of indignation and energy had been inspired by her, it was now for Hugh Despenser. His strange mind would be piteously set against all who would remove the favourite from him. “Get up, Ghislaine,” she ordered. “Tell them to send one of my clerks to me with pen and paper, that I may write to the King. I must intercede for my poor uncle as I did before.”

  “And so successfully, Madam,” murmured Ghislaine, remembering how she and the two Clare girls had been gossiping in a corner and had not shown sufficient admiration when their Queen had come back from her triumph in Westminster Hall.

  But willingly as Ghislaine would have hurried on her errand Hawtayne stopped her with a gesture before she reached the door. He, too, had heard news, it appeared. “Did Sir Robert not tell you?” he asked, his plain flat face as white as it had been on the evening when he had found Dragon outside the King’s bedroom.

  “Tell me what, Goodwin?” said the girl, wide-eyed.

  The Queen’s steward made a helpless gesture with his ungainly arms and stood wretchedly before his mistress. “It is too late to write, your Grace,” he said.

  “Too late?” The words framed themselves almost soundlessly on the Queen’s lips. “You have had some later news?”

  “I was trying to bring myself to tell your Grace. It seems the King called together a few of the lords who led his army and formed them into a jury, and he himself presided over the trial in the great hall at Pontefract Castle.” Hawtayne’s eyes sought Bringnette’s, beseeching advice. It was already rumoured about the Palace that the Queen was pregnant again since her husband’s last visit and the poor man was afraid to go on lest he should shock her. But Isabel made an impatient gesture and he had no choice. “They brought in a verdict of Guilty. After all, Madam, he had taken up arms against the King and he had received that money from the Bruce. So — he was condemned to death.”

  Isabel rose unsteadily and Bringnette put an arm about her. “You hear what Goodwin says?” she cried. “That Edward did this — condemned my own uncle to death. Uncle Thomas was foolish and pompous and discontented, I know. But he had to put up with those upstart Despensers. And he was kind to me when I first came — when I was so shocked and unhappy.” For a moment or two Isabel hid her face against Bringnette’s thin breast and allowed the older woman to comfort her. Then she pulled herself together and turned with a spark of hope. “But they will bring him to London. To the Tower, no doubt. And I will be able to plead for him in person then.” She looked around at the circle of devoted friends. “Why do you say nothing, Goodwin? Why do you look at me like that?”

  Goodwin Hawtayne went down on his knees before her. “Because they beheaded him a few hours later — at Pontefract.”

  Isabel thought that the room grew dark and her women’s anxious faces began to swim before her. But anger saved her from swooning. She sank weeping in her chair. “It was done purposely. The King did it purposely. So that I could not write to my brother, in France, or intercede here,” she moaned, forgetful of all who could hear her. She believed that Edward was all too well aware that, had she been given but an hour’s chance to do so, she would have beguiled him into sparing a man who, with all his faults, had been a part of his family life. And suddenly it occurred to her that the hated Despenser must have feared this, too, and persuaded Edward to such inhuman haste.

  She wept for her uncle because he had been a link with her relatives in France and had so often formed a conversational trio with Marguerite. She ordered mourning for her ladies and for herself, although it did not suit her. But her feeling for Thomas Plantagenet was more a surface grief augmented by her indignation with Edward, and in no way comparable to her deep and lasting longing for the companionship of her aunt Marguerite. And the whole unhappy affair was swept violently from her mind when she heard that both the Mortimers, uncle and nephew, were in the Tower.

  Taking advantage of the haste with which he had rid himself of Lancaster, Edward had led his victorious army further westward to punish his erstwhile border lords and allies for the humiliating blow which they had struck against Hugh Despenser. He had summoned them to his presence, but they had defied him and refused to come. But, with that strange intermittent courage and energy which had informed him when Gaveston, his former friend, had been in danger, he had forced even the Mortimers to surrender.

  “These two men, Gaveston and Despenser, must be all he really cares about,” thought Isabel, tossing sleepless in her bed with all her sympathies projected towards the grim stronghold of the Tower.

  Chapter Twenty

  Many times towards the end of that winter the Queen called upon her watermen to row her down-river from Westminster to Wapping stairs, and invariably as they drew level with the Tower of London she would order them to rest awhile upon their oars. Her bargemaster was amazed that she should want to make such a journey, wrapped in furs and big with child, and her women dreaded the days when the whim took her, less because of the bleak grey weather than because it meant shooting the turbulent rapids between the starlings of London Bridge. And although they knew that all skilled watermen could do it they never failed to scream as the strong tide drove them beneath the shadow of one of the narr
ow arches, remembering how a lady of some former Queen had once been rocked overboard in panic and drowned.

  Isabel always spoke to them sharply telling them to be quiet, because their frightened jabbering disturbed her thoughts. She herself seemed scarcely to notice the dangerous moments, her gaze being fixed upon the bank to starboard for so long as the Conqueror’s stronghold was in sight. It was as if she would learn every feature of its river frontage. The keep rising white and massive in the centre, the low wide Watergate with slimy steps and ominous bars through which traitors were taken to their doom and through which Thames water fed the moat, and the various odd-shaped towers built strategically along the encircling walls.

  “Which gloomy tower shuts in Roger Mortimer, who is used to riding all day in wind and sunshine on the Welsh mountains?” she wondered, but was far too shrewd to ask outright or show concern for him. Only when the time of her delivery drew near did she pretend to grow fanciful and frequently voiced a desire to spend her confinement in the Tower.

  “But you have always said how much you hate the place. That night we had to spend there before the Coronation you complained that it was damp,” Edward reminded her.

  “I was but newly come from the sunshine of France, and your kingdom was at peace then. Now, with all these unending disagreements with the barons, I fear violence.”

  “But what cause have you to fear?” he had asked impatiently. “The people adore you. And surely you would find the time pass more pleasantly at Windsor or Eltham than cooped against the evil-smelling gutters of the City?” With her gift for play-acting Isabel had managed to combine a fond look with a convincing shudder. “With you away, mon mari, I should feel safer in the Tower.”

  Other royal children had been born there, and Hugh Despenser, who seemed to have a voice in even the most domestic matters these days, was quick to second her wish. As she had foreseen, he would be only too glad to have her out of his way. And so Edward, who was usually so careful about anything concerning his children but who now seemed to care little either way, had given the necessary orders before leaving for York. Isabel’s goods and chattels had been removed to the royal apartments in the Tower and in due course, to the delight of the Londoners, her second daughter had been bornthere. “‘Joan of the Tower’ people will call her, just they call your Grace’s second son ‘John of Eltham,’” prophesied Ghislaine, hoping soon to marry Robert le Messager and have children of her own. “And she is the prettiest baby of them all, with her fair skin and hair reverting to true Plantagenet auburn.”

  At nine years old Prince Edward already had his own tutor, and Isabel had left the other children in the care of their nurses. And, reminding her steward that there would not be overmuch room, she had been careful to bring only a few of her women and such as she trusted most. The birth of her child had been only an excuse for living within the Tower precincts, and she wanted no clacking tongues or prying eyes.

  And now the spring’s ordeal of childbirth was over and the privy garden in the Tower was bright with summer flowers, and she walked there in the afternoon sunshine, wondering how she could make contact with Roger Mortimer and what she could do to save him from the executioner’s axe. The garden was small, being confined on one side by the long, low range of royal apartments and on the other by the south-eastern section of the outer wall, guarded by the Cradle and Well towers jutting out into the moat. At either end of the apartments rose the bulk of the Salt tower and the Lantern tower, all of which she had so carefully noted from her barge. Walking in her garden, she had no view of the busy wharf outside the wall nor of the swiftly-flowing Thames such as she had from her windows above, nor could she hear any sounds of life save the mournful cry of gulls, rough seamen’s voices and the harsh squeak of pulleys. She knew that people marvelled how she, who so loved gaiety, could choose to stay there.

  “But with so much unrest in the country, and the poor lady not long over her fourth lying-in — ”

  “And she always lookin’ like some lovely fragile flower — ”

  Only that morning she had overheard men talking thus about her as they came ashore with the armful of rushes which was the Constable’s due from every Norfolk wherry bringing thatching reeds and floor rushes to London. And when the Constable’s wife had voiced much the same kind of sympathy for her fragility, Isabel, remembering the May Queen’s advice, had made no effort to disabuse her of the notion. When her own women offered a supporting arm or the kindly solace of their company she told them that her head ached with the heat and that she preferred to wander about the place alone. And when Edward sent a message congratulating her upon the birth of another princess for the European marriage market, and suggesting that she might now return to Westminster, she had sent back word that she did not yet feel strong enough to make the move. Seizing upon a complaint which need show no symptoms, she had described nights of sleeplessness and the good physician Bramtoft had prescribed a potion made from crushed poppy seeds. “It is a cure which our Crusaders brought back from the Holy Land,” he told her. “And vastly potent, since the Saracens use this opiate for deadening the pain of their wounded when they have to sever a gangrened limb. I do assure you, Madam, that having taken a few drops of this soporific draught your Grace will enjoy a sound and happy sleep as soon as head touches pillow.” Isabel had thanked him languidly and each night when the potion was brought she had managed, with Bringnette’s connivance, to hide the phial beneath her pillow or slip it into a corner of her jewel casket.

  And now her various ruses had given her time to act. Edward was away in York and the windows of his apartments, stretching at right angles to her own from Lantern tower to outer wall, looked down like empty eyes upon the privy garden. And Roger Mortimer, she knew, was somewhere within the Tower facing the thought of death. Her first move had been to invite Sir Stephen Segrave, the Constable, to sup with her and draw from him confirmation that Roger and his uncle were imprisoned in some lower part of the Lantern tower, but Sir Stephen was a man of stern and conscientious disposition and not even her subtlest wiles had succeeded in drawing from him more details of their lodgings or their well-being. But he had brought his lieutenant with him and the pleasant young man had proved far more susceptible. Utterly thrilled at being noticed by the Queen, he had mentioned that while the younger Mortimer kept his body fit by such athletic exercises as his cramped lodgings permitted, old Mortimer of Chirk seemed to be failing rapidly through poor food and the past winter’s severe cold. “His nephew is much concerned for him and tries to press all the best morsels of their meat upon him,” he added, encouraged by the Queen’s interest. “But in their rigorous quarters there is little he can do for him, and I doubt if the old man is long for this world.”

  Detaining him on some pretext, Isabel had beguiled him with her sweetest smile. “In the cause of humanity could you not find means to let the poor old man have something from my own too abundant table?”

  Thinking her the most charitable of ladies and flattered at being talked to privately after his superior had left, young Gerard Alspaye had promised recklessly. “There is a most efficient servant with them, a scar-faced Gascon, and the Lantern tower lies near the royal kitchen. I make no doubt he could gain entry there and if, in the performance of my duties, I should pass him on the stairs bearing an extra dish or two I could admire the view from the nearest arrow slit, if it would please your Grace.”

  And so food had been sent, ostensibly out of pity for an old man who was dying, but always with a surfeit for a younger man who was trying to keep up his strength. And now she walked in the sparse shade of the plane trees wondering how she could send a message with the food. Roger Mortimer must know that she was in residence. Perhaps he could even see her from his window. She stood for a long time looking towards the lower windows of the Lantern tower, but when she turned in her pensive promenade and saw the Bishop of Hereford being brought towards her, she guessed that Mortimer had already devised some contact between them.

&nbs
p; Adam Orleton was a portly churchman whose interests, like the Earl of Hereford’s, had always been linked with the Welsh marches. His very name was taken from a manor given him by the Mortimers. “For whom does the chapel bell keep tolling?” she asked hurriedly after she had greeted him and her women had withdrawn.

  “It is for the Lord of Chirk. At his age he could not be expected to support the rigorous conditions here. He went to his Maker an hour ago. He asked for me, and his nephew persuaded the Constable to let me come. And what more natural, Madam, that being in the Tower I should ask leave to wait upon your Grace?”

  “Or what more fortunate?”

  Isabel looked searchingly at his bland, pink face. “Your Grace may trust me and speak openly,” he said, after a backward glance to assure himself that none of her people was within earshot. “I have reason to believe that it was as much for his own ends as for his uncle’s spiritual needs that Roger Mortimer sent for me. He tells me that these past weeks they have received gifts from your Grace’s table, and asked me to express his thanks.”

  “A small thing, milord. And I would do more,” said Isabel, leading him to a garden seat. “Do you suppose that the King really means to put him to death?”

  “The Bishop of Durham and I have pleaded for him, and at one time his Grace seemed only too willing to reduce his sentence to imprisonment. I think the King is mindful of all Mortimer’s years of loyal service. I think, too, that he would not willingly destroy a man whom Piers Gaveston liked. But I fear Despenser drives him to it.”