Isabel the Fair

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  It had meant begging for an interview with the smooth-tongued Despenser, because at that time the King would no longer see her. It had meant being civil to him even though he had purposely kept her waiting, as she had guessed he would. But she was prepared to do anything to get away. She had promised Roger Mortimer that she would join him if it were humanly possible. “And if he could climb a kitchen chimney and swim the Thames, a little lick-spittling will not hurt me,” she told herself.

  She had the satisfaction of knowing that Despenser must have gone straight to the King and discussed her proposal. She supposed that Edward saw in it a way of getting out of difficulties of his own making without altering his pleasant habit of life; and that Despenser — who desired above everything the King’s undivided attention — must feel that since Edward had failed to put her out of the way by getting her with child again, the next best thing would be for her to go abroad. Isabel believed and hoped that he had found it more difficult than he had anticipated to stir up her husband’s enmity against her.

  However that may have been, an expedient reconciliation was patched up between the three of them. Dispatches were sent to Paris, the Cinque Ports were ordered to place a fleet at her disposal, an escort provided — an escort so lavish that it would give Charles the impression that her complaints about parsimony must be all lies. As if to make up for past neglect, Edward busied himself personally with preparations for her comfort on the journey. While pretending to listen carefully to Hugh Despenser’s diplomatic instructions, Isabel looked past him to her husband’s diligently bent head as he wrote meticulous orders for one of his sea captains, and the thought went winging almost impersonally through her mind, “How little does he suspect that he is sending me to my lover! And if he knew, how much would his heart care?”

  Ned and John were to ride with her as far as Eltham, and she had the younger children sent to her to say good-bye. Which was almost the undoing of her plans. Small, chubby Eleanor clung and kissed and plagued her with innocent questions about how long she would be gone, and tiny Joan of the Tower gurgled happily in her arms. Isabel paced the palace garden holding one by the hand and the other against her breast. “I will come back, my pretty sweetings,” she vowed softly. “I will come back and bring you fine dresses from Paris, and one day I will make you both queens. Though perhaps,” she thought, looking down at their sweet, trusting faces, “it may prove small kindness to send either of you across the sea to marry a handsome king.”

  As she rode over London bridge on a May morning and southwards through busy Kentish villages the people ran into the streets and waved from upper windows, throwing their caps in the air and shouting for her as though she were the saviour of their country as well as their Queen. And the following day, after a storm of rain, countrymen hooked down branches from the tree and dragged their precious winter fuel to fill in the muddy potholes before her horse’s hoofs, while their women risked being crushed by the crowds or bruised by the pikes of her guard just to kiss the hem of her riding cloak. At least there was one royal personage, they felt, who knew how desperately their country needed peace and who was willing to do something about it.

  Gervase Alard, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, rode out from Winchelsea to meet her. Beyond the harbour bar blue sky met blue sea, and the wind was favourable for her voyage. Standing at a window in Alard’s best room looking out at a fleet of graceful ships flying the leopards and lilies from their mainmasts, and watching her horses and goods being stowed on board, Isabel could scarcely believe her good fortune. Only a few weeks ago she had been humiliated and watched, and now she was free, with a new pattern of life before her. It had all been too easily come by. How could Edward have failed to guess at the cause of her eagerness, how could she at last have hoodwinked the wily Despenser? Suppose even now his sly wife should be whispering to him about some unsuspected lover overseas? Suppose at the last minute the King should change his mind and refuse to let her go? In sudden-panic she found herself listening for the hurrying hoofbeats of some messenger sent to detain her, and watching the small scudding clouds lest the wind should veer. The memory of all she had endured drove her to urgent restlessness. To be made to turn back now, with love and happiness almost within her grasp, would be unendurable. She turned to the kindly and susceptible Lord Warden, entreating him with every wile she knew. “Make them hurry so that we may sail tonight, good sir. As we came through Tonbridge a soothsayer foretold that the weather would break before dawn. And I am impatient to be away by then to serve the interests of milord the King, and of your countrymen who have ever been kind to me.”

  So the Queen’s fleet set out to sea that evening. The stars were shining when she stepped on board. Brightly twinkling stars portending some brighter destiny, she hoped. Though who could see into the future? For the moment it was enough that a widening wake of water put all fear of recall behind her. That every billowing of the great sails carried her nearer to the man she had always wanted — a man strong enough to control their joint destinies, in whose arms she would find a sure and satisfying haven. A man who by his self-confidence and by his own physical exploits had achieved a spectacular escape where other men had always failed.

  Stepping ashore at Boulogne was to Isabel a homecoming. The Governor and the aged Abbe were waiting on the quay and the town was bright with banners. France was welcoming her own. Riding through the flower-strewn streets and entering the castle, Isabel found her thoughts returning vividly to her wedding day. Almost as though she were some other being she looked back at that shy, romantic princess who had come there to be married, and who had been so easily pleased with the outward beauty of her English husband. A foolish child, her head stuffed with romantic dreams, and good, no doubt. Anxious to comport herself in public so as to please her parents, and immensely impressed by the vows and solemn beauty of her marriage service. Isabel looked back at her nostalgically from the distance of time and of her present maturity. “I am a woman now with few illusions, but still, please God, some years of beauty,” she thought. “And this time, instead of taking brittle dreams to my bridegroom to break, I am going with fierce joy to a lover.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Riding into Paris on a May morning seemed to Isabel like coming back into the heart of the world. “It is so much larger than London!” she exclaimed proudly, not having seen it since her eldest child was a babe.

  “Seven times as large, they say,” answered the Abbe of Notre Dame, who had been sent to meet her. “And a seat of learning with a growing university as well.”

  “Such as the Clares and the Pembrokes are so anxious to benefit at Cambridge,” recalled Isabel.

  She had passed through the busy towns and fertile fields of Northern France, where shopkeepers and peasants worked unhindered by constant alarms of warfare, and had contrasted their peaceful prosperity with the ever-shifting violence of life in England. Now that she was on the Continent, the ports and towns of her husband’s island kingdom seemed to her memory like toys. For the last few miles of their journey her party had followed the course of the Seine through a well-tilled valley between richly wooded hills, until the splendid city lay before them. And soon the river divided to cradle in its arms the island on which past kings of France had built their palace, the fantastically towered and turreted Louvre sprawling within its high strong walls. An arched, stone bridge joined it to either bank, and over the Grand Pont rode Isabel with her French and English escort. To her, that day, Paris had seemed an enchanted city because it held her lover and because within the palace, Charles, her brother, was waiting to receive her.

  “There never was such a homecoming,” she thought. All the people seemed to be shouting a welcome in the streets, and all the church bells rang for her. And at the end there was the kindness of Charles’s smile. “You will rest and eat first, and talk politics afterwards,” he insisted.

  “And meet those few of our relatives who are left,” said Isabel, looking round the familiar rooms wher
e there were so few familiar faces. Parents and both her elder brothers were dead, but Charles, for all his cynicism, had ever been the dearest of them all and the one most likely to listen to her. So she pushed aside the shadow of sadness and supped with him merrily. There was music and laughter, and a great state and profusion which, with each trumpet-heralded course, proclaimed the unquestioned wealth and power of the King of France. “Short work would he make of any insubordinate barons who rose in arms to quarrel with him,” she thought. “And short work will he make of Edward’s French possessions if I do not intervene.”

  After supper he gave her her opportunity, having a chair of state set for her near his throne, and motioning to his courtiers to withdraw. She complained bitterly of the Despensers’ influence, but loyally pleaded her husband’s difficulties and the war-impoverished state of his kingdom.

  “It seems to be much as your lord of Pembroke put it to me,” said Charles thoughtfully, “though you paint the picture darker. A pleasant and intelligent man, that Pembroke, with many useful years before him by which we might both have profited. I was grieved by his untimely death.”

  “And I, with still more cause. Since I first went to England he had been my friend and counsellor. Almost the only one of those clamouring English barons who looked beyond the aggrandizement of his own power. A tolerant man, a steadying hand to me in a bewildering world, God rest his soul!”

  “He, too, has always pleaded Edward’s difficulties. And I was patient, as you know, during the Scottish wars.”

  “Most patient,” agreed Isabel, guessing that with his usual shrewdness he had been waiting to see which way victory would go.

  “But now that my unwarlike brother-in-law has come to terms with Robert Bruce I see nothing that should detain him from doing me homage for Guienne.”

  “There are fresh and bitter disputes with the barons, chiefly stirred up by the Despensers who, with Edward’s favour, grasp their lands.”

  “So I hear from this Roger Mortimer who escaped from your Tower of London. An incredible feat, by all accounts. A man whom Edward would have been wiser not to offend, I should imagine.”

  Isabel looked up, warm with pride. “For years the Mortimers have kept the north-westerly marches and been like uncrowned kings of Wales.”

  “Certainly the man has initiative and strength. I will send for him to attend to our official council meeting on this matter tomorrow. And in the meantime, my dear Isabel, you may rest assured that if you can persuade that husband of yours to bestir himself to cross la Manche and swear fealty to me I will stay my hand in Guienne. So take some rest, my sweet sister, after your long journey.” When she would have knelt to him he rose and kissed her on both cheeks, holding her face affectionately for a moment or two between his hands. “You are all that I have left, ma chere.”

  Isabel’s eyes suffused with tears. “Until you have a family of your own,” she said sympathetically.

  ‘That I hope to do,” he said. “But unfortunately our brothers’ wives were both barren and unfaithful. So that we two, Isabel, are at the moment the only remaining Capets.”

  Ridden by her own urgent concerns, Isabel failed to notice the gravity of his words or to realize their full implication. Hers was the eagerness of a girl in love, coupled with a woman’s zest. “Did your Grace mean that Roger Mortimer — is actually housed here within the Louvre?” she asked hurriedly as Charles beckoned to his Chamberlain to escort her to her apartments.

  “I could scarcely do less than offer hospitality to any man who had brought me news of you, ma chere soeur,” smiled Charles negligently.

  Isabel curtsied low and gratefully. While her procession formed she allowed the more important of his admiring courtiers to kiss her hand. And all the way along the torch-lit corridors and up the staircase to the ladies’ bower, with Chamberlain and ushers and torchbearers going before and her women and pages following after, she was thinking, “Roger is here, somewhere within these walls, and tomorrow I shall see him.” And had she not promised herself to him if he escaped?

  In her bedroom her women performed their nightly ritual of taking off her glittering garments, bathing her with rosewater, unpinning the jewelled rolls of her headdress and unbraiding her hair. It had been a long day and some of them yawned secretly behind their hands. Bringnette, she supposed, must be already in bed, having asked leave to retire because the motion of the sea had brought on one of her bad headaches. But there was no sleep in Isabel. She moved restlessly about, touching first one familiar thing and then another, delighted that Charles should have thought of giving her the room she had occupied as a girl, though now there were grander tapestries on the rounded stone walls and rich Eastern rugs brought from the crusades, and the finest wax candles such as were to be seen before the high altar in Notre Dame. Everything was fit for a queen. But the tall arched window was the same, and the carved chest where she had once kept her girlhood treasures, and the bed with its blue-and-gold hangings, and beside it the small door leading to the garde-robe turret with the winding stair by which she used to run down singing to her mother’s privy garden. She stood for a while, forgetful of her tired women, looking out across the Seine and over the sleeping moonlit city, then turned to finger the thickly embossed fleurs-de-lys on the crimson hangings of her bed. The hangings were snugly drawn save for a space by the window, the linen sheets invitingly folded back, the small stool set for her to climb on to the thick, feather mattress. And there, to her surprise, stood Bringnette half hidden in the shadows between the bed and the garden door. “Why, Bringnette, I did not see you come in with the others, I had thought you were long since asleep!” she exclaimed, with a little start “I so much wanted you to have a good night.”

  “And may Heaven send your Grace a happy one.” There was something in the old lady’s face which made Isabel look at her again. A guarded, troubled look. And when she sank down as well as her old bones would let her to kiss her mistress’s hand she slipped into it something hard and cold.

  Warned by such stealth of manner, Isabel kept her hand hidden in the folds of her rose-pink bedgown until the others had all curtsied and were gone. She watched Bringnette move slowly after them across the room. Only when they were alone did she open her hand and look upon the small iron key that lay there, and then questioningly at Bringnette.

  “The little garden door,” the Countess said laconically. “In case your Grace should wish to take the air.”

  Shrugging resignedly as one who would have nothing further to do with the matter, she made to follow the other women; but Isabel, lithe as a young girl, sprang after her. “You mean, you exasperating old woman, that Roger Mortimer is down there?”

  But Bringnette, brought up in rigid traditions, sniffed disapprovingly. “I am too old to have any part in such affairs. It is for your Grace to decide whether to use the key or not,” she muttered mulishly. Then added, with a twinkle in her sharp eyes, “At least he had the sense to cajole instead of trying to bribe me.”

  She seemed thankful to go, and Isabel bolted the main door again behind her. She stood barefoot in the moonlight, the key in her hand and her heart hammering in her breast. “It is years since I first saw him, when he looked at me with those brazen eyes of his and told me we were meant to be partners in all things — and now the moment has come.” By the tumult in her blood she knew that there would be small need for decision. Her marriage, her life in England, her prayers and spiritual struggles and lapses were all forgotten. Only the urgent joy of the moment remained. She pushed her white feet into fur-lined slippers and ran down the turret stair, her heart singing — though no longer with girlish innocence — and unlocked the little door. The walled garden was streaked with silver moonlight and sable shadows, and he was standing in the deepest shadow of all beneath the old mulberry tree where she had first sat dreaming about some future lover. How foolish she had been these last hours! All Paris knew of her arrival, and so must he. And all day, throughout the glitter and the ceremony
, she might have known that he would be waiting there — he who invariably succeeded in all that he contrived. He moved towards her and smiled, and with a low cry she ran to him, letting him hold her in the long wordless embrace for which both their bodies had so long hungered.

  Half laughing, hand in hand, she led him up the turret stair, and her night was happy indeed, as Bringnette had hoped. “Charmed hours stolen out of the ugliness of time,” she murmured, resting against his shoulder in the blue-and-gold bed when the hours of night were done.

  “We will make them a lasting reality,” he said, having little use for fantasy. “Our destinies are now joined, my sweet.”

  “And, even less than ordinary lovers, we have no idea where our joined destinies may lead us.”

  “Or others,” he added, almost grimly. “But for good or ill we go on together.”

  And hearing him say it she was content.

  Through the open window she watched the city flush to the pale warmth of dawn. It was one of those things which she was to learn, getting to know him intimately, that no Mortimer could bear to be closed in. He was mountain born, accustomed to campaigning cat-sleeps beneath the stars. His curtains must be drawn back, all windows open to the earthy sounds and smells of the outside world. And she, luxurious child of palaces, would shiver and suffer, she supposed; but always, because the foible was part of him, she would do so with an indulgent smile. And she would be warm in his arms.

  “But now you must be going,” she warned, dragging herself back to the reality of the coming day. She let him take her again, and then, fulfilled and listless, began to laugh weakly. “How amusing it will be to meet again this morning over a council table, discreetly clothed, among a group of stuffy statesmen, discussing the fate of Guienne! And Charles with no inkling that I lay naked in your arms last night.”