“Hugh Despenser drives us all to disloyalties we would not otherwise dream of.” Even now her conscience held her back from what she would do. She must have justification, know for certain. She laid an entreating hand on the Bishop’s sleeve. “Do you, milord, believe what they say of Hugh Despenser — and my husband?”
He did not answer her directly, but sighed and looked down at his strong, silver-buckled shoes. “Madam, our Blessed Lady knows that you have been called upon to bear much.”
“Then, as a churchman, you do not condemn me if I strive to help Roger Mortimer?”
Christian conscience and political ambition struggled in the man. “So long as you do not go beyond helping him, my child.”
“Then how can I see him?”
The eagerness in her voice would have betrayed to the merest moron that it was more than help she wished to give, but Adam Orleton’s desire for Mortimer’s release matched her own, and the pause was almost negligible before he answered. “It would seem that since the older Mortimer’s death Segrave has relented. Roger is to be allowed to walk on the Well tower battlements for an hour a day before noon. There is, as your Grace knows, a small door to the Well tower from your garden. And young Alspaye, who will be on duty tomorrow, has promised to send the sentry on some errand.”
Forgetful of all that she had suffered in the past, all Isabel’s being became suddenly vibrant with joyous expectation for the future. “Did Roger Mortimer ask you to tell me this? Does he hope that I will contrive to be there? Alone?” she asked, her voice low and deep with excitement.
But the portly bishop would burden his conscience in the matter no further. “I am merely acquainting your Grace of the fact, since of your kindness you have shown concern for the Mortimers’ welfare,” he said sanctimoniously, well aware that to one of her temperament he had already said enough.
By the next day the Queen had taken a strong dislike to the pattern of a wall tapestry her women had been embroidering and, although the sun shone temptingly, kept them indoors at their frames unpicking it. Only old Bringnette was allowed to sit sunning herself on a bench with an advantageous view of the garden while the Queen of England, in a chambermaid’s borrowed cloak, ran lithely as a girl to a lover’s tryst up the Bell tower stairs.
And Roger Mortimer, sure of her coming, was waiting for her at the top, with the sun on his face and the wind in his hair.
“Was there ever such a courageous woman?” he whispered approvingly. He would have taken her into his arms. But, although that merlon of the battlements was deserted, she was all nerves, her senses too much engaged in listening to imaginary footsteps. “I am grieved for your loss,” she whispered.
His face saddened. “My uncle was a fine old man. Never in his life had he been caged like this before. If only our inhuman gaolers had allowed him to get out into the sunshine some times — ”
“And yourself?”
He stood before her in the pride of manhood, flexing his muscles. “See — do I look ill?”
She was as helplessly impressed as a peahen before its mate. “The young lieutenant — ”
“Alspaye?”
“Yes. He says you do all manner of exercises.”
“And now I am allowed to walk on the battlements, as you see. And my meals this week have been almost feasts. I imagine Segrave’s conscience was jolted when my uncle died. He becomes quite affable. But it was really the food from your kitchen which kept me fit.”
“A mere quid pro quo for your waggons during the famine. I will go north and entreat the King for your life. I will do anything — ”
“And do you suppose he will remember my lifetime of useful service, with Despenser at his elbow? Save your steps, Madam, and stay to help me here. I would not have you humiliate yourself begging favours for me when I can escape.”
For the first time Isabel’s gaze passed from him to the solidity of stone with which they were surrounded. “Escape? From here? From the Tower of London?”
“And why not?”
“Robert le Messager boasted that he would, but only my pleas released him.”
“Le Messager!” he repeated with careless contempt.
“But what man ever has since prisoners were first incarcerated here?”
‘‘None that I know of. But no Mortimer has ever tried.” The very naturalness of his arrogance fascinated her, so that when he spoke more gently and took her hands in his she allowed them to remain there. “Remember, my sweet, there must always be a first time for every achievement.”
“You are crazy, Roger.”
“Not if you will help me.”
“But what can I do?”
“Consent to be my partner in all things, as nature intended. Come and sit here and I will tell you.” He drew her down on to a low stone platform on which the sentries sometimes stood. Although he sat close beside her he no longer held her. They might have been two men talking desperately together. “Thanks to your ingenuity Dragon has often been in your kitchen of late. Those snapping dark eyes of his miss nothing. He tells me your great kitchen chimney goes up at this end of the royal apartments against this tower. That the two buildings join, in fact. He drew a plan with his dagger on the circular wall of our room, and together we have gradually prised away some stones in our side of it, so that a man could crawl through into the chimney.”
Isabel was aghast at the daring of their scheme. “But the Constable — or the guards — if they should come in and see what you have done?”
“In the day-time we put everything back, and push my bed in front of it. Since we came Dragon has waited on us so that no prying servant knows. We find there are rough projecting slabs in your kitchen chimney by which an agile man may climb — put there for the sweeping of it. I suppose. Once up it and out into the open air with a rope wound about my body, I could let myself down on to the roof of the King’s apartments and crawl along it to the outer wall which, as you know, is strengthened just there by the Cradle tower jutting out into the moat. With all the tackle kept in that tower for raising cargo left for the Constable it should be child’s play to let myself down into the moat, swim across and pull myself up onto the wharf.”
“But there are guarded gates at either end. You would never pass them either to St. Katherine’s steps or into Thames Street. And I have wormed this piece of information out of Gerard Alspaye — that by the Constable’s orders all rowing boats moored at the wharf must have their bungs taken out at night.”
Mortimer nodded, agreeing but unperturbed. “Then I must slip quietly into the Thames and swim across to the Surrey shore. It would need to be a dark night, of course.”
“Swim the Thames? At its great width below bridge?” Isabel shuddered and clutched at his arm, remembering the swift tide swirling beneath the dark arches, and picturing his drowned body being dashed against the green-slimed starlings.
But he only smiled at her reassuringly. “I should remember to take off my boots,” he teased. “And was it not in hope of some such possibility that I kept my muscles in trim? But Dragon and I never arrived at a workable plan till now — and, in any case, I could not have left my uncle in his helplessness.”
“And what next did you plan?” she asked, carried along by his enthusiasm in spite of all her doubts. “If you reach — when you reach the Surrey shore?”
“Milord Bishop of Hereford might happen to leave a couple of horses over there in some ill-locked tavern stable — to be used for some worthy episcopal errand, of course. If he knew which night.”
He turned to her, grinning, with one eyebrow quizzically raised, and Isabel was quick to take up her cue. “He is staying with the Bishop of Durham, I understand. When I know the night I could ride along the Strand to take the air, and stop to admire the roses in his host’s garden,” she suggested with a smile. “So simple a thing to do. Was that all the help you wanted?”
Mortimer raised her hand to his lips, and then forgot to let it go. For a Welsh border lord his gallantry was some
times surprisingly Parisian, but that, she supposed with annoyance, came of his having acquired a rich French wife. “Your Grace probably knows if anyone lodges above me who might hear us move the heavy stones or see me from the upper windows of the Lantern tower?” he said.
“No one,” she assured him. “It is the King’s bedchamber. He has gone north. And as you just said, the chosen night must be dark.”
“But do not forget the lantern itself. Shining from the top of the tower on a pitch-black night it must be of great guiding comfort to mariners sailing up the Thames, but at some point along the palace roof I shall have to cross its beam. But that is a hazard I must take — And then there is the matter of the Constable himself. And his officers who go the rounds. I could make them drunk, I suppose, first. But how can I, mewed up in one locked room, get to them?”
“Make them come to you. Give a feast and invite them all.”
“A marvellous thought. But for what occasion? If I should make a feast so soon after my bereavement they would suspect me of some such purpose. It must happen naturally — and soon — before the King and that rat Despenser return to London.”
Isabel rose and stood leaning thoughtfully upon the coping of the wall. “Next week, so they tell me, the foundation will be celebrated of the chapel which the first Edward had built down there in the bailey and dedicated to St. Peter ad Vincula.”
“Scarcely good cause enough, since they know I hate everything within this place. Now if only it were St. David’s day Still, the desperate must seize on straws. Upon what date does this commemoration day fall?”
“The first of August.”
“The first of August! Witch that you are!”
At the exultation in his voice she turned and found him, in spite of all his danger, looking as excited as a boy.
“Why?” she asked, laughing. “Why do you sound so glad?”
“Because it is my birthday. With all this pother I had forgotten. That and my accession to the Lordship of Chirk should make a worthy occasion. And by my reckoning there will be no moon. And, I fear,” he added ruefully, “precious little wine. Certainly not enough to make a dozen men drunk.”
“A ship put in this morning from Bordeaux. Perhaps for such an occasion Sir Stephen might provide you with a bottle or two from his perquisites.”
“And have his well-disciplined servants serve it,” Mortimer reminded her. “Besides, drink takes men so differently. Some are more dangerous drunk than sober. And the Constable himself would probably remain abstemious.” They stood looking at each other, nonplussed, in silence, until suddenly Isabel found herself inspired. “My sleeping potion!” she exclaimed, on a delicious burst of excited laughter. “The one my physician gave me when I tried to stay here. A drop or two apiece should settle them all.”
He held her, laughing in unison, while she explained. “Dragon can put some in the wine. According to old Bramtoft the officers should be in a very stupor of sleep in a few minutes. But you must see to it that they all begin their drinking with a birthday health to you lest one should succumb before another and suspect your trickery.”
“That is well thought of. But how am I to get the stuff?”
“The lady of Bringningcourt will invent some errand to the kitchen at such time as Dragon will be there. The other ladies you may trust, milord, but she is the only one who is completely in my confidence.”
Roger Mortimer stood looking out across the river to the open south bank streets, the sunlit marshes and the homely villages beyond. “And so in a week’s time I may really be gone,” he said, drawing in a deep breath. “Merciful God, how good it will be to bestride a horse again!”
And Isabel the Queen stood small and still beside him. “And ride back to Wigmore — leaving me here,” she said, thinking of that other Frenchwoman who was beautiful but cold.
He swung round at once and caught her to his heart. This time she knew his ardour to be untinged by any thought of expedience, since dalliance could but endanger him. “We were made for each other. No woman ever so rose to all a man’s demands. We are still alone. Give me yourself before I go, and so let us make it the complete partnership.”
Her eyes were closed, her eager senses clamouring to obey. But some lingering potency of her lovely, cheated marriage vows still held her chaste. She must give herself time, set an almost impossible condition upon her surrender. “Wait awhile, my love,” she whispered, freeing a hand to restrain his hot, demanding lips. “Escape from here first, prove yourself so much more a man than any of them, and one day you shall have me. I swear it.”
He had not expected her to make terms and stared down at her, angry in his frustration. “You can bargain, at such a moment, about love as fierce as ours? So that you may enjoy the thrill to your vanity, I must buy your body’s softness with my body’s danger.”
“Is not a Queen’s surrender worth it?”
His eyes were still angry, but he let her go. “You are a proud woman, but worth waiting for,” he told her, deliberately ignoring the royal blood in her veins. “I would not have a mouse-like prude.”
They talked indifferently of this and that, filling in what might have been such precious time. Ships with billowing sails passed busily along the river below, gulls screamed overhead, but their thoughts were all of themselves. “Why did you speak of two horses waiting over there?” asked Isabel, still listless from the tearing battle with her senses.
“Had we stolen a boat Dragon would have come, but unfortunately he cannot swim,” Mortimer answered almost woodenly. “At one time I had thought of Gerard Alspaye, but am not sure how far I can bribe him.”
“I, too, have tried with him.”
“So I gathered.”
“I think he would go far — ”
“No doubt he would, for you. But do not try too hard. Your lips are mine. There will be no need to bemuse the lad out of his few senses after I am gone.”
A door banged loudly at the bottom of the turret. Feet began to tramp heavily up the stairs. An approaching sentry was whistling a popular tune from one of the King’s plays.
Isabel moved quickly into the shadow of the great well wheel around which the bucket ropes were coiled. Where will you make for?” she whispered, all eagerness again.
“Paris,” Mortimer whispered back, his jealous antagonism forgotten. “If the Despenser’s reign proves unbearable, move Heaven and earth to join me there. Somehow I will contrive to let you know.”
Their precious stolen hour was finished. It had been invaluable because it had set the seal upon Mortimer’s plans for escape, but they both felt that emotionally it had been wasted or had slipped away too fast.
“All through the first night of the month I shall be watching and praying for you,” she whispered, looking upon him with the thought that it might be for the last time.
He gathered up her forgotten cloak from the stone platform and, putting it about her shoulders, bent to kiss her white throat possessively. “And before we grow old some other night will come when you will be keeping your sworn promise to me,” he told her.
Pulling the dark material of the cloak across her face, she slipped into the shadows behind the wheel as the sentry’s rubicund face appeared level with the flagstones of the well chamber floor. The moment he appeared Mortimer was shouting to him from the doorway and pointing excitedly to some strange foreign ship. The man stumbled hurriedly up the few remaining steps, all agog with curiosity. “Where be she, Sir?” he called out, and ran clumsily across the well room to join the prisoner on the battlements. And in that contrived moment the Queen slipped unobserved down the way he had come and joined Bringnette, who appeared to be nodding placidly on a garden seat.
Chapter Twenty-One
All that first day of August the Queen had been restless and difficult to serve. First she had wanted to do one thing and then another, until her women were worn out. “It is this oppressive heat, or maybe she is sickening for something,” they whispered among themselves.
“If only poor Thomeline were still here to soothe her with his music!” sighed Bringnette, who knew only too well why the Queen stayed.
By the time the long day was ended and Curfew rang from the Bell tower, all members of the royal household were thankful to seek their beds. And so no one saw the Queen herself slip down the garden stairs with a dark, hooded cloak drawn about her. A light still burned in her bedroom, but only old Bringnette was there, nodding in her chair. Isabel paced the garden until dawn, watching and praying and listening to the least sound. “If he is caught now while attempting this mad escape, there will be no doubt about his death,” she thought. But Roger Mortimer’s calculations had been right. Mercifully, the night was dark as pitch and, even by the faint downward glow of the beacon which was kept burning on top of the Lantern tower, she could discern no one moving on roof or chimney.
Saying that she could not eat roasted meat on such a day, she had ordered a supper of cold venison pasty and peaches so that the cooks should go off duty early and the roaring kitchen fire be damped down. She had tired out her household so that all were abed. A few days earlier she had visited the Bishop of Hereford. In fact, as a useful partner, she had done everything she could think of to help Mortimer. But she was still racked with fears. “If he should be suffocated in that foul black chimney … If he should slip from the sloping roof of the King’s apartments … If he should be more weakened than he thinks by long confinement so that he cannot battle with the tide — if he should be drawn down, down into the deep dark waters of the Thames … ” All through the breathless summer night she lived in the life of the man she loved, as women do. The scent of stocks from the flower beds was so overpoweringly sweet that it almost made her swoon, and every step of the sentry on the battlements and the least rustle of leaf or cheep of bird came to her strained ears like a thunderclap. Earlier on there had been a light streaming out from a deep-set lower window in the Lantern tower and a converging of bobbing lanterns. She had heard a coming and going of footsteps and then, from the lighted window, the sound of men’s voices and bursts of convivial laughter. But all had been silent for a long time now and the light had gradually guttered out. And no one, so far as she could tell, had come out again from the Lantern tower. It seemed almost as if Mortimer’s plan must have succeeded. “Either he has really escaped, or he lies dead,” thought Isabel, shivering beneath the warm texture of her cloak in spite of the midsummer heat. “And somehow I must wait until it is morning to know.”
Isabel the Fair Page 18