The Queen's Spy

by Caroline Newark

  ‘Would you do that?’ said Edmund’s brother.

  Isabella ignored the question. ‘We shall grant pardons. We don’t wish to begin my son’s reign with more discontent than is necessary.’

  Edmund leaned forward. ‘Lancaster will not agree to have Sir Robert Holand pardoned. Holand was a traitor to his brother. He will want him hanged.’

  ‘Very well, but we have had sufficient hangings. I will deny this Holand his lands but he may keep his life.’

  ‘There is another difficulty,’ said Lord Norfolk. ‘The lands of the Lincoln inheritance. Henry of Lancaster regards them as his by right.’

  ‘He can think what he likes,’ said Isabella. ‘Those lands remain with me as do the others the king has awarded me out of the goodness of his heart.’

  I nearly choked. I’d been present when Isabella had dictated the list of castles and manors she was taking. There was no question of argument; if she wanted them she was going to have them. Even her son gasped at her avarice but he knew who was in charge and veiled his eyes, dutifully agreeing each gift to his dearest mother.

  She took Sir Edward’s favourite palace of Langley and the pretty riverside manor of Sheen, as well as the castles of Leeds and Guildford and Porchester. She took Burstwick, which Edmund said was one of his mother’s favourite houses. She took Rockingham and Odiham and Bristol and Havering-atte-Bower. By the time she’d finished there was not a single county in the kingdom where Isabella did not own the choicest residences. Except for the far north where she said only a fool would want a house with the Scots breathing down your neck.

  ‘What about the council?’ queried Edmund. ‘The parliament will get to select the members and as the council will control my nephew, surely it is more important than this matter of pardons.’

  ‘Lord Mortimer, will you put yourself forward?’ That was Bishop Orleton.

  ‘No,’ said my cousin firmly. ‘Neither the queen nor I will sit on the council. We shall have Lord Edmund, Lord Norfolk and Lord Surrey, and you Orleton. There will be bishops aplenty to argue the finer points of each decision and if we let Lancaster have control he will assume the council will do as he says.’

  ‘Is that not risky?’ said Edmund’s brother.

  ‘It is a calculated risk, my Lord Norfolk. Lancaster may hold Sir Edward but we have the boy.’

  Isabella leaned across the table. ‘Lord Mortimer, your tongue will be your undoing. If you are referring to your king, you should choose words suitable to his estate. I have reminded you once, I shall not do so again.’

  My cousin glared at her. ‘For the particular words, I convey my apologies to his grace. For the sentiments, I do not. We must never forget that he is only a boy of tender years and we, around this table, must be the men who rule the kingdom, not Lancaster and his cronies.’

  And not the queen, he was saying silently, because she is just a woman and we all know woman are feeble creatures.

  We went home, exhausted.

  ‘She has promised me Fitzalan’s lands,’ said Edmund as we rode back through the streets. The world was as black as pitch, lit only by the torches of our outriders.

  ‘How wonderful,’ I said, thinking of the honour. ‘Earl of Arundel.’

  ‘Just the lands, not the title. She’s not that generous. But we’ll have the castle at Arundel and you’ll like that, Margaret. They say it’s high up with a sight of the sea, and I believe there’s a pretty garden. We’ll make it our home if it pleases you.’

  ‘If you are there,’ I said, all of a sudden flooded with happiness, ‘it will please me, even without the honour.’

  The next day saw us back at Westminster hurrying hither and thither through the maze of rooms in the royal palace. Edmund had business with his brother and I was to attend the queen.

  I should not have listened, but the door was ajar and old habits die hard.

  ‘I have told you, he is leaving.’ It was Isabella’s voice.

  ‘Not soon enough.’ That was my cousin.

  ‘So you have said.’

  ‘And may I ask, my lady, exactly what you have given him, besides your favours?’

  I heard the sound of a woman’s hand slapped hard across a man’s cheek. This was followed by a quick struggle. A richly-embroidered brocade crackled as if it was being crushed, then a whisper of velvet swept the wooden boards, a muffled groan, and a long sigh.

  The Lady Isabella, mother of the king of England, and her closest companion, my cousin, Lord Mortimer of Wigmore, were in the queen’s private chamber having one of their not infrequent quarrels. This time the subject was the imminent departure of Sir John and the last of his Hainaulter friends.

  Sir John was effusive in his praise for his “beautiful lady”, and Isabella, tiring of my cousin’s boorish behaviour, had shown Count William’s brother a little too much attention. She had smiled at him once too often, held his gaze just that bit too long, and to my cousin’s fury, had ordered her son to award Sir John a vast pension in gratitude for his services.

  ‘We all know what services those were,’ snarled my cousin.

  ‘He is a more gallant man than you, Lord Mortimer,’ she spat.

  ‘And who is to pay for your gallants? By the time you’ve finished, your son’s treasury will be as empty as a drunkard’s purse’

  Another slap.

  ‘And it was I who delivered this kingdom into your hands, my lady, not that coxcomb. Don’t you forget it.’

  Of recent, the quarrels, the slaps and the subsequent embraces had become more frequent and I feared if she did not give way to him soon, their mutual desire would drive them to the brink of something terrible.

  ‘Why in the name of the blessed St Thomas does she not let him into her bed,’ grumbled Edmund. ‘Then we’d have some peace. Our meetings are racked with their quarrels. She snips and snipes and he retaliates with words I would not use to a fishwife.’

  ‘She cannot. She is terrified of the damnation which would follow. It’s not something they could keep secret and imagine what the bishops would say. Not to mention His Holiness. And she remembers what happened to her brother’s wife, the faithless Blanche. Adultery is the worst of sins for a woman.’

  ‘Men do not see it that way,’ said Edmund. ‘Look at your cousin. He’s hardly concerned for his immortal soul.’

  A picture flashed through my mind of Joan, Lady Mortimer sitting in the hall at Wigmore, her face radiant with joy at the sight of my cousin striding across the floor, still dusty from his travels.

  ‘Men may choose to believe what they like and the church may choose to collude with them,’ I said in a low voice, ‘but it is still a sin, and a man who loves his wife should remain faithful.’

  Edmund muttered something about the earl of Surrey and his many mistresses.

  ‘Don’t forget, dear husband, my cousin has no royal blood, no matter what he may pretend. He is like me.’

  ‘And I let you into my bed,’ said my husband with a straight face and feigned surprise. ‘What was I thinking of?’

  I kissed his cheek.

  ‘You married me. That is different.’

  ‘Christ’s blood! You don’t think he … he can’t intend …?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To marry her.’ Edmund’s voice had sunk to a whisper and no wonder - what he’d suggested was treasonable.

  To marry a queen! What a prize that would be for Roger Mortimer, lord of Wigmore. But of course it couldn’t happen. There were far too many obstacles in the way, not least the presence of Lord Mortimer’s wife.

  My cousin had seen to the release of his family from their various places of incarceration ordered by the king and Sir Hugh Despenser but to my knowledge he’d seen Joan only once since our return. In November he’d gone to Pembridge, the manor where they’d married, but the meeting between the two had been brief. They scarcely
had time to greet each other before my cousin was back in the saddle. Since then he’d made no attempt to visit his wife and had not once mentioned her name.

  The following day instead of setting out to visit our new castle as planned, I received a summons. With very bad grace I returned to the queen’s apartments in Westminster Palace, settled my face into its expected humble demeanour and went to find Isabella. She was in her private rooms examining some objects on a table.

  I observed her from my position in the doorway. Her fingers were resting on an exquisite little silver box. To a casual onlooker she was doing nothing in particular, but I knew what was in her mind - she was savouring the riches she had confiscated from her enemies, making a mental inventory of her shiny treasures. In short, she was gloating.

  I moved forward. At the sound of my footsteps she turned on her heel and smiled.

  ‘Margaret! At last! I have need of you.’

  She waited impatiently as I crossed the floor.

  ‘Your brother is my constable at the Tower.’

  ‘Lord Wake has done nothing wrong, has he?’ I asked anxiously.

  ‘On the contrary, he is a good servant: thorough, diligent, a hard man with little imagination. Just what I need in a keeper.’

  She moistened her lips with her tongue and regarded me severely. ‘I require you to visit your brother, Margaret.’

  ‘Of course, your grace, if that is what you wish. Do you need me to carry a message?’

  ‘No. The purpose of your visit is to be secret, known only to me and to you. You will not mention this to your husband. Do you understand?’

  ‘I shall tell Lord Edmund nothing.’

  ‘Now listen.’ Her voice lowered. ‘While you are visiting your brother you will also visit the Lady Eleanor Despenser.’

  I had almost forgotten Eleanor. Ever since Sir John secured the Tower for Isabella, Eleanor had been deprived of her freedom.

  ‘You must agree it was a stroke of genius to place your brother in charge of Lady Eleanor,’ said Isabella, smiling unpleasantly. ‘I’m sure he was able to describe the scene of her husband’s death much more vividly than an ordinary gaoler. You often said you wished you had known how your first husband died. I remembered your words when I instructed Lord Wake to spare Lady Eleanor none of the more distressing details of Sir Hugh’s execution. I thought it would not be kind to leave her in ignorance.’

  What Isabella had done was cruel and I felt nothing but disgust for her heartlessness. But it wouldn’t do to let my thoughts show. It was never wise to let Isabella know what you were thinking.

  ‘What do you wish me to say to Lady Eleanor, your grace?’

  ‘I am in receipt of a message from Lord Wake. Your brother is a careful and observant man, Margaret, but he is only a man. A woman would have noticed sooner. However, no matter. He tells me the lady has a belly on her. Lady Despenser says nothing but your brother took her maidservant in for questioning and the woman has admitted the truth: another brat to add to the slut’s army of little Despensers.’

  In my head I did some counting: five months since we’d landed so five months since Eleanor had last seen either her husband or her uncle.’

  ‘The child will be born in the summer?’ I said enquiringly.

  ‘Ii is not my practice to send a midwife to the dungeons to ascertain such things,’ Isabella replied dismissively. ‘Naturally it is her husband’s brat, but …’

  The unspoken possibility hung in the air and dropped into my waiting hands like a red-hot burning coal. I knew at once what I was supposed to do.

  ‘I understand what is required, your grace. I shall discover what you need to know and I shall report back to you and to no-one else.’

  ‘See that you do.’

  Next morning I climbed the stairs to Eleanor’s rooms. Tom accompanied me with much grumbling but before I entered, I sent him away. I wanted no witness to my conversation with Eleanor Despenser. It was not that I didn’t trust my brother but this was too delicate a matter to take even the smallest of risks. The meeting must be between Eleanor and me and no-one else.

  She looked up from the bench where she was seated. She was thinner than when I’d last seen her. The face beneath her cap was hollowed and she no longer dressed as a great lady. In truth, she was very much diminished.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, returning her attention to the child who lay with its head in her lap. Beneath the drab woollen gown I could see the slight swell of her belly pressing gently against the fair curls.

  ‘Your youngest?’ I said politely.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ she replied, stroking the little girl’s forehead with her fingers. Barely more than a babe.’

  I remembered in Paris someone saying Eleanor had been delivered of another child.

  ‘My uncle named her for his favourite sister, my Aunt Elizabeth. He came to see me two days before she was born and we discussed the matter of my child’s name. He was concerned because my husband was absent and my uncle feared for my low spirits.’

  I was told how the king had rowed himself upriver to Sheen with a purse of gold to dine with his niece and stayed half the night. It had been a little scandal picked over with great glee in the French king’s palaces and we all had our own opinion as to what had occurred between the king and the Lady Eleanor Despenser on that dark December night.

  ‘Your uncle was very good to you.’

  Her face brightened. ‘He was very attentive and very kind. He paid for all my pleasures and I had so little to give him in return. Yet he said that what I gave him was all he could have ever wanted.’

  She had a distant look and I wondered what it was that she had given him. What would a highly favoured niece bestow upon an uncommonly devoted uncle? I had a sudden recollection of the French woman in Paris saying, “Best keep it in the family.”

  ‘That winter he made me a gift of a white palfrey, one with green trappings to match my eyes,’ said Eleanor, twisting her daughter’s curls into little ringlets. ‘And goldfinches. Did you know that? Dozens of them. I let them fly round my chamber but then we couldn’t catch them and they escaped. It didn’t matter because he brought me some more. Have you seen goldfinches?’

  ‘Once or twice. Tiny things. Not really worth the eating.’

  She lowered her head and the light faded from her eyes. ‘Have you come to gloat over me or have you come to bring me news of my uncle? Your brother is very close-mouthed and will tell me nothing.’

  ‘You have heard about your husband?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her face was impassive and I couldn’t tell if she was grieving or not.

  ‘You must miss his company,’ I said, trying to provoke a response.

  ‘He was often away.’ She sounded as if she had neither interest nor concern in her husband’s doings.

  ‘But he was the father of your children?’

  She looked at me with her slanting green eyes, saying nothing, showing nothing. If Eleanor Despenser grieved for her husband she was not going to tell me, and if I had questions about the child in her belly I was certain she would remain equally silent.

  ‘My brother tells me you are with child.’

  A veiled look crept over her eyes. ‘And if I am?’

  ‘You must have proper care. Do you get enough to eat?’

  ‘It is not what I am used to but I’m sure your brother does his best.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want your husband’s last child to suffer.’

  ‘All my children are suffering.’

  At that moment the inner door opened and two little boys appeared together with an older woman who I took to be Eleanor’s maid.

  ‘Now you see the whole of my household,’ said Eleanor with a sweep of her hand. ‘I am well provided for, don’t you think?’

  I looked through the open doorway to the room beyond. />
  ‘Are your daughters not with you?’

  I remembered the little Despenser girls running around Eleanor’s chambers at various times over the years. Her eldest was married to the Fitzalan boy, once a good match, but not now that his father was an attainted traitor. She would be with her husband’s family but I was surprised the younger ones had not been shut away with their mother.

  ‘They were taken.’

  ‘Taken? Who has taken them?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  I had heard nothing of the Despenser girls having been taken by Isabella but it didn’t surprise me. What better way to vent your spite on a woman than by removing her children from the households where she had so carefully and lovingly placed them.

  ‘If you are wondering where they are, she has put them behind the walls of a convent,’ said Eleanor in a cold precise voice. ‘That is my punishment. She has had them forcibly veiled. They can never come out and I will never see them married.’

  I was shocked. These girls were only little children.

  ‘They will be brides of Christ,’ I said, wanting all of a sudden to be kind. ‘It is a worthy life.’ Then I remembered the Mortimer daughters. ‘And your husband and your uncle did the same to Lord Mortimer’s girls.’

  ‘It wasn’t the same in any way. Mortimer’s daughters only lodged with the nuns, they weren’t forced to remain there for the rest of their lives.’

  She turned her head away from me but not before I saw a single tear roll down her cheek. I almost felt sorry for her.

  I looked round her room. It was comfortable if rather bare. The smouldering sticks in the hearth kept the cold at bay, but in my household, the boy who brought in the logs would have been cuffed for setting such a meagre fire. Gone were the goldfinches and the little beribboned dogs, the gilded cages and the turkey rugs; and gone too were the engraved goblets and silver gilt bowls which had graced Eleanor’s sideboard. There were a few children’s clothes lying on the table, and on one of the benches, a single book.